Odd Kind of Honeymoon
by deaka
Summary: Newly married Luke and Mara Skywalker journey across Tatooine on their honeymoon, some unexpected discoveries arising along the way.
1. Part 1

**Title:** Odd Kind of Honeymoon  
**Setting: **Post-_Vision of the Future/Union  
_**Characters:** Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, others

**Author Note:** Originally posted about 12 months ago on another site under a different username. There will be four parts in total.

* * *

"This is an odd kind of honeymoon, Skywalker…" 

Mara Jade – newly and somewhat jarringly, Mara Jade Skywalker – gathered writhing tendrils of hair behind her with one hand as she narrowed her eyes at the parched landscape spread below, burning under the light of double suns. A mass of sand-coloured buildings and narrow streets struggled to distinguish themselves from the desert, wavering in the thick heat.

"I did promise solitude." Her new husband's voice was as dry as the desert spanning before them.

Mara surveyed the bleak vista of Mos Espa and surrounds. "I'd say you've delivered." She turned.

Luke stood a little behind her, calm in the off-white desert clothes he'd donned like a native – because he _was_ a native, she supposed. It was easy to forget that.

He tilted his head as she looked at him, faint amusement flickering somewhere in his eyes. "I knew you wouldn't want to be coddled, so Coruscant's luxury resorts were out. Sustained inactivity doesn't particularly suit either of us, so the Mid Rim relaxation destinations were out as well. Doesn't leave a broad range of choice…"

He advanced, stopping before her. The same wind that tugged at her hair was riffling his gently, making the sand dance around their legs and setting his tunic flapping.

There was a slight anxiety in his eyes as well, somewhere past or within the amusement. Mara noted it a little awkwardly, knowing it held the weight of how dearly he wanted to please her. "Those places aren't too private either," she remarked. "Wouldn't take much for someone to recognise us, and then—"

Luke's lips quirked. "We'd have to spend our entire honeymoon in our room."

Mara flicked him a look from beneath her eyelashes. "I was going to say it would be like the restrained circus that was our wedding all over again."

"Mm." He sobered and looked off over Mos Espa. "Well, that's when I thought of this. It's been years since I've been back – over five, I think – and you'd said you didn't see much while you were here. Plus it would have to be one of the most secluded places the galaxy has on offer."

"I suppose that's true." The wind caught Mara's hair again as she turned back towards Mos Espa, and it twisted and danced in the hot air.

"Besides," Luke murmured, in a tone of voice she was still getting used to, "I had to surprise my wife. She's not an easy woman to surprise, you know." He slid his arms around her waist.

Mara allowed herself to relax into the embrace. Luke's warmth was welcoming, despite the heat of the suns above and sand below. "I rather pride myself on it," she admitted.

"I know," Luke whispered. He wound his fingers through her hair, then gently unwound them, his reluctance plain. "We should keep moving, I suppose. This heat's not healthy."

* * *

"I don't see why Solo – Han – couldn't have docked in Mos Espa itself," Mara grumbled as they trekked down the bluff in the direction of the straggling town. "Or doesn't it have docking facilities?" 

"It does," Luke's footsteps crunched behind her on the packed sand, falling in time with hers. "I'm not sure why he couldn't, actually. Said something about an old score that wasn't settled, and then clammed up on me. He claims the walk will do us good."

"Typical." Mara snorted. "I can just imagine the reaction if someone were to suggest _he _take a cross-desert trek."

"It's not too far, really," Luke said philosophically. "We should be there before nightfall."

"And then…?"

"And then we decide on a place to sleep, I suppose."

"Hm." Mara turned to face him, crossing her arms and quirking an eyebrow. "Just sleep, Master Jedi? Or did you have something else in mind?"

She'd expected a blush, but he merely lifted an eyebrow in response and smiled, an odd kind of smile that did strange things to her stomach. "We'll come up with something, Mrs Skywalker."

Caught off-guard, she allowed her own smile to soften. Luke stepped close and raised his fingers to her lips, resting them there a moment.

Mara met his gaze and whispered, "A game of sabacc?"

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Not quite what I was thinking."

"Dejarik?"

He smiled, shook his head, and ran his fingers over her cheek and along her jaw. Then he brought his mouth to her ear. "It's not nice to tease."

Mara gave him a sardonic look. "I'm not sure I do 'nice'."

Luke laughed in response, and took her hand – but didn't argue. "Come on. We'd best get in before it gets dark."

* * *

They arrived at the outskirts of the city at midset – the period of day between the setting of the first sun and the setting of the second, Luke informed her. Mos Espa was an odd town, sprawling and untidy and anonymous with its sandstone huts and narrow streets. It felt like a transitory place, unremarkable in a strained way, as though hiding through its ordinariness from the savagery of Tatooine's desolate terrain. 

The inhabitants all wore similar clothing to Luke – loose desert garb, plainly cut, with uncomplicated designs and little colour. Mara had chosen to don plain shorts and a loose tunic, not Tatooine-standard but simple enough. Still, she felt covert scrutiny as they walked, perhaps for the unusual garb, perhaps for her loose hair, shining red in the light of the dying suns. Most of the humans she saw were dark-haired, or with a similar dull sandy blonde colouring to Luke. A few had flaxen-coloured hair, either naturally or bleached by the suns, but none shared the vividness of her shading. Colours seemed unnatural in this monochromatic world.

She felt a little self-conscious, and it made her set her shoulders and raise her chin as she walked; otherwise she allowed the feeling no leeway. Luke, as far as she could tell, failed to notice the stares: he walked along, composed and alert as always – but there was a slight distance to his eyes that she noted curiously.

He halted after a while, and turned to her. "There's something very odd about this place," he said quietly. "Can you feel it?"

Mara glanced at a low hut nearby, and Luke said, "I don't mean them. These are the old slave quarters, Mara, this part of the city. There's a lot of poverty here. People are wary of strangers. It's the same on the outskirts of Mos Eisley."

He _had_ noticed the scrutiny. Mara frowned. "What am I supposed to be looking for, then?"

"The Force," Luke said. "There's something strange here. Can you feel it?"

She narrowed her eyes. "No teaching on our honeymoon, remember, Skywalker?"

"Mara—"

"Oh, all right." Mara closed her eyes somewhat testily, and reached into the Force. Luke buzzed impatiently beside her, strength and restrained power in tones of brown and gold, and Tatooine extended away before her senses, parched and ancient…

Mara sensed a vague wrongness – a feeling deep and old, pain and powerlessness and fear, lives and generations of exploitation. It crept down around her spine, vague as it was, and weaved coldness through her stomach. She snapped her eyes open. "I don't feel anything," she said. "Just the effect of decades of treating people like chattel."

There was disappointment in Luke's eyes. "Nothing more?"

"Like what?" She felt cold still from that numb powerlessness, and he wanted more?

"I'm not sure. Just something – something familiar, almost."

Mara looked at him closely. He was staring at nothing, a faintly perplexed frown on his face. "Ah," she said delicately, as realisation struck. "This is the town Leia said your father grew up in, isn't it?"

"I told her, actually. But yes, it is."

"Hm." Mara mulled for a moment, trying to find the best way to put her next suggestion.

"I'm not imagining it," he said before she could speak; he did so a trifle defensively. "There's something around here, Mara. At least… I think there is."

"All right," Mara said. His indecision didn't prompt her trust, as much as she wanted to believe him; uncertainty wasn't, after all, Luke's natural state. "Maybe it'll come to you."

He flicked her a look that said he'd caught more of her thoughts than she intended. The bond they shared had as many drawbacks as strengths, sometimes. But he only said, "Maybe." He shifted the bag on his shoulder and glanced at the sky. "We'd better find somewhere to stay, anyhow. It's getting dark, and Tatooine nights are cold."

* * *

The house they eventually found was small, virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the sandy street. "Are you sure this is the right place?" Mara asked doubtfully. 

Luke shrugged. "We can only ask and find out." He reached and touched a small chime just inside the door recess.

Mara shifted her feet beside him. The second sun was setting, and the shadows on the street were long. She could still feel silent eyes watching her from the shadowed homes nearby, and the miasma of old pain lingered in the Force, setting her on edge. Luke didn't seem particularly bothered by either.

Her hand was on his arm; she tightened her grip unconsciously, and he glanced at her. She was about to suggest they find somewhere else when the door slid open.

An older woman stood there, silver-peppered hair tied up with a cloth, dressed in the plain clothes most women on Tatooine seemed to wear. She frowned at them.

Mara waited for Luke to speak, but he didn't. Flicking him a glance of annoyance, she said to the woman, "We're looking for a place to board for the night, but I don't think we have the right address."

The woman's face cleared. "Oh, of course. Please come in. I do offer accommodation to visitors – we don't get many at this part of the year, though." She stepped aside.

Luke, apparently having shaken himself out of his brief daze, stepped in through the door, and Mara followed.

The house showed obvious signs of wear, but was meticulously cleaned and cared for. Mara wondered how long that slow period had truly lasted. Luke complimented the woman on a rug, making some comment about the intricacy of the weave, and the woman beamed with pride. Obviously it was her own work. How Luke had managed to hone in on that so quickly, Mara had no idea.

Their room was small, but comfortable. The woman left them to settle, telling them that a meal would be served in an hour. Mara collapsed onto the bed. Luke stared after the woman for a moment, then shook his head and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Something wrong?" Mara nudged his leg gently with her knee.

He half turned, then sighed and lay back beside her. "She reminded me of Aunt Beru for a moment," he murmured to the ceiling.

"Oh." There wasn't a lot to say to that; Mara could think of nothing. She shifted closer, resting her head near Luke's. He smelled like desert and sun and sweat; the wind had mussed his hair, and his skin was warm to her touch. She ran her fingers over his jaw, then leaned to place a lingering kiss on his stubbled cheek.

He glanced at her, and his eyes softened. He lifted his hand to her hair, running his fingers through its tangled length. He murmured, "Dinner—"

"—is in an hour."

Luke said, "Ah," and drew her close.

* * *

Dinner was a simple meal – some kind of stringy meat, and a few limp vegetables. Mara poked at it somewhat dubiously, noting that Luke ate readily – and with the same relish he would a plate of Adygonian cuttlefish. That he wasn't particularly picky (_discerning_, even, said an honest voice at the back of her mind) when it came to food was a source of some relief to her, given he would probably be expected to eat her cooking at some stage in their marriage. If he could eat _this_ meal happily, surely he wouldn't find hers unpalatable? 

Since when did she care what anyone, Luke Skywalker included, thought of her cooking? Mara scowled and stabbed a piece of meat. Their being married didn't mean she had to suddenly require his approval in every walk of life.

"It's bantha meat," Luke said. "Practically a staple food here."

"Mm," said Mara unenthusiastically.

He flicked her an odd look that made her wonder how much of her thoughts or mood he'd picked up on, but made no comment. Mara asked what he had in mind for the following day, he replied that he had no plans in particular, and the meal carried on.

They sat for a while outside, and Luke told her of evenings spent watching the clear stars as a child, solo journeys undertaken in the mind around a galaxy that lay open and welcoming against the dull monotony of life in the dunes. There was still something of the old magic in his voice as he spoke, after so many years, and Mara found herself thinking of her own childhood as she gazed upward. The stars had held no wonder for her; they were only cold conduits to other places, to harder tests and bleaker duties. Just balls of fire burning with distant light. No magic there.

Luke didn't look at her, sitting by her side with his eyes on the stars; but he did reach and take her hand, squeezing her fingers tightly. She thought he was wondering whether to say something, whether to ask, but she liked their shared silence, and just shook her head. He took the hint and said nothing, though she could feel him wondering.

He would just have to wonder, because there were times she didn't feel like telling; he would have to learn to live with it. That habit of wanting to fix everything would have to go. Some things just weren't fixable. He would only drive them both insane trying.

The house seemed shadowed and silent as they went back inside. Most Tatooine homes were built at least partially underground, Mara gathered, in an attempt to stave off the heat from the suns. Luke had been right about Tatooine being cold at night – the temperature had plummeted with the setting of the suns, and though the sandy walls retained some of the day's heat, there was a definite chill in the air. Luke's hand seemed very warm in Mara's, comfortingly so in the quiet of the house. She'd noticed that his body heat was always a little higher than that of others – but there was no logical reason, and Mara wondered if it only seemed so to her. Perhaps Luke emanated the sense through the Force without realising he did so, and she somehow discerned it unconsciously.

However she rationalized it, Mara just liked the fact that his hands were always warm. She couldn't quite figure out why, and that frustrated her, but it was there and undeniable.

Luke suddenly halted in the shadows of the hall, breaking Mara from her thoughts. She was startled to see a figure had appeared in one of the doorways: a small figure in the gloom, hunched and shapeless and bundled. It moved forward at a shuffling pace, and Mara saw the figure was an old woman – very old, by her lined, leathered face and unfocused eyes. Her hair was silver and white, like the snows of Hoth caught in sunlight. Her hunched figure indicated a lifetime of toil and hardship, and the darkness of her skin said she had spent many years in the cruelty of Tatooine's suns. Another former slave, perhaps, or a street vendor struggling in the paltry markets.

The woman seemed to be staring at Luke, her dark eyes shiny and opalescent. She could be blind, Mara thought, but the intentness of that gaze seemed to belie that. "Storm's coming," the woman said. "Storm's coming again."

Luke frowned, then stepped forward. "Are you well?"

"Ah," said the woman, a sound like a sigh. "They're always coming. I saw them all, once. Such a nice child…" She stared at Luke, and Luke stared back at her. "Such a nice boy," the old woman said again, sadly this time. "They don't ever lose their chains, slaves. Not in their hearts. Especially child slaves."

Luke took another step forward. There was a waking intentness in his eyes; a strange kind of abstraction shadowing his features. It was an edge he didn't often show, that sudden glimpsed intensity. Mara had only seen it a few times, and it always startled her.

Then the woman who'd greeted them at the door appeared from down the hall. "Mother," she said chidingly, taking the older woman's arm. "Leave these people alone." She directed her next words somewhere between Luke, still staring at the old woman, and Mara, standing just behind him. "I'm sorry. She spent many years working in the suns, and gets very confused. Pay no heed."

Luke continued to stare at the old woman, who was staring at him – or though him, Mara still wasn't sure. He opened his mouth, narrowing his eyes slightly. He didn't speak for a moment, then demanded, "What was she saying about slaves?"

"Just nonsense," the younger woman said, somewhat apprehensively. Luke's expression was a little daunting – perhaps she feared losing her business. "Pay no heed."

She turned and began to speak softly to the old woman, then led her back into the room. Luke stared after them, a slow frown creasing his forehead.

Mara put a hand on his chest to forestall his moving to follow the women. "Luke," she said softly in warning.

He turned to her. "She was talking about my father," he said desperately. "It had to be him. Did you hear what she said?"

"She's old, Luke. And confused. Her words could have meant anything."

He frowned and turned back to the door. "I suppose," he murmured after a few moments; but then he shook his head, whether to clear it or in denial, Mara wasn't certain. "Doesn't matter." He met her eye and smiled, that still-alien smile that was becoming intimately familiar, furtive and warm. He leaned and placed a kiss by her ear, running the fingers of his right hand through her loose hair.

"Doesn't it?" Mara tilted her head, caught a little off-guard by his sudden shift.

"No." He brushed her lips with his own. "It doesn't."

Mara decided not to argue.

* * *

They explored more of Mos Espa the next day, traipsing down dusty streets and between sandstone houses. They visited the old podracing arena, and Mara watched while Luke paced up and down the sandy track, then clambered up the rundown stands high enough to see a portion of the old circuit dwindling away to the horizon. He lifted his hand before his eyes, following the fading course with a finger, then whistled lowly. "To have raced this…" he murmured to himself. "What a thrill." 

The hot wind had blown his hair into disarray. Standing watching him, Mara was certain that although she'd never known the rash and reckless farmboy he'd once been, there was more than an edge of that boy present in the gleam of her husband's eyes.

She was also very glad that the only podracers still in existence on Tatooine were in parts and on junker's scrapheaps, and that it had been so since he was very young. She doubted very much that a young Luke Skywalker could have resisted the twin lure of danger and thrill any more than his father apparently once had. And podracing was a killer of a sport by anyone's standards.

He caught her eye; the smile he showed her was bright, and a little embarrassed. She shook her head at him, returned his rueful smile, and lifted her hand. He took her fingers and they clambered back down the abandoned stands together.

Mara almost fancied she could feel the echo of frenzied exultation around them in the empty arena, of bloodlust and greed and adrenalin. And, quieter but more pressing, somewhere beneath, the cold and painful terror of lovers and mothers and wives.

She breathed out, and the feeling dispersed into the hot air.

The day wore on. By nightfall, they'd found one of the older sections of the former slave district in the city's outskirts. They spent an hour wandering through the crumbling houses; Luke didn't say anything, but Mara knew he was looking for something.

Eventually he stopped outside one domed hovel. The suns had set and the stars were beginning to prick in the darkening sky. Mara was cold and hungry, but said nothing as Luke wordlessly ducked inside. She followed.

The house was in poor condition; one of the walls was partially caved in, and sand piled everywhere. There'd been a revolt, apparently, at some stage in the last thirty years – or an Imperial attack, the reports varied – and this section of housing had taken much damage. This particular house appeared to be one of the hardest hit.

Luke wandered about for some time. Mara ran her fingers over the smoothened walls and wondered at the pain that must have been experienced here: not acute pain – not torment, not anguish – but pain of the spirit, pain of hardship and poverty and unending sacrifice. She could feel it still – had felt it ever since they'd come here – but suddenly it seemed to press on her and chill her.

Luke bent on the threshold to another, smaller room. He seemed to dig around in the sand for a while, then drew out a piece of metal which he examined. "Almost reminds me…" he muttered, his brow creasing, but he didn't finish the sentence, instead shaking his head and standing. He crossed and showed her the piece of metal, apparently an old part from some kind of servomotor – perhaps a droid servomotor. "There are more, I think," he said, looking toward the room with a frown. "Old parts and the like. Nothing more."

"Mm," Mara murmured, turning the piece over and then handing it back. Luke had given her his cloak; she shifted it around her shoulders as she watched him go back to stand in the middle of the empty room, his eyes distant and a frown on his face.

They ended up on a roof section, looking down over the sanded street. The stars shone brightly and coldly down over them. Luke had descended the worn stairs and was crouched at the bottom, looking over the bare street. Mara leaned against the wall at the top, watching him. The wind was blowing again – blowing cold now, straight off the desert from the harsh, wild feel of it. Mara unwound her hair, letting it twist in the wind.

They stayed that way for a time, Mara standing in silence as Luke crouched. She felt a vague, undefined sadness drift off him, but it was unclear and she was tired – and probably sunburnt besides, given how tender her face and neck felt. After a while, Luke sighed and opened his hand, turning it as though to release something. "I don't know," he murmured, and rose. Mara sensed that he'd reached some decision – no. It wasn't quite that. More as though he was acknowledging something he'd already known but didn't want to accept. She watched as he climbed the stairs, stopping halfway up to look at her. His eyes seemed bluer than usual in the moonlight. She was expecting some kind of explanation, but he surprised her by asking, his voice quiet: "Are you all right?"

Mara almost pulled a face – so much for hiding her discomfort. Something in his expression said that he'd known all along, but had chosen not to push. Or perhaps she was imagining that. Mara shook her head and told him, "I don't know. It's not – I don't like what I sense here."

It was impossible to explain. How could she tell him how close the old pain of this place came to memories and emotions she kept in a dark corner of herself, hidden and repressed? She'd never been a slave, but she'd felt a slave's loss, a slave's shame, a slave's anger. She'd had a master and she'd been a token in his schemes.

She couldn't explain that, and never would be able to. Not even to him.

But – as he looked up at her, as his eyes softened with compassion and empathy and hardened somewhere with a glitter of defensive anger – she knew she didn't have to.

"We'll leave for Mos Eisley in the morning," he said.

Surprised, Mara said, "You're done here already?"

He sighed and turned from her, looking across the dark city. "There's nothing for me here, really," he said, and she heard the dull sorrow in his voice. "There never has been. That died fifteen years ago, and it isn't coming back." Down by his side, his prosthetic hand clenched once, then opened.

Mara agreed, though she wouldn't have said so as bluntly. As she watched him lower his chin to watch the stars, it dawned on her that she wasn't the only one with unfixable problems. Luke's hunger for connection with his father, born of a child's loneliness and abandonment in the dunes and sharpened through twin fires of betrayal and love, was clearly such an issue, and it was one he would likely never stop trying to resolve nor ever satisfactorily fulfil.

She wondered if he realised that, and searched on anyway; or if the search was mostly unconscious, something he'd long ago stopped noticing.

He turned his head slightly toward her, lifting his hand. "Come stand with me."

She walked down, and he put his arms around her gently, careful of her sunburn. She leaned her head back against his shoulder somewhat tentatively; the movement still felt strange. "The stars really are beautiful, aren't they?" Luke murmured after a while.

Mara looked at them, burning suns of distant fire given magic through the power and generosity of his belief. "Yes," she said thoughtfully. "They are."

She wasn't sure he caught her meaning, but she thought he did, and that was enough.

* * *

Mara slept restively that night, her dreams full of shadows and distress, dark shapes that loomed but refused to take shape or definition. She turned in her sleep, seeking to push off the edges of the dream— 

She burst out of it suddenly, waking bewildered in unfamiliar darkness. A heavy, warm weight pressed at her side, and, shreds of dream-panic still holding her, she tensed and twisted, thrusting backward. An elbow connected – the weight jerked – there was a muffled grunt, followed by a muffled thump as the weight fell off the narrow bed.

As _Luke_ fell out of bed. Mara bit her lip.

A few sleepy and surprisingly inventive curses drifted from the darkness below, followed by a "What the …?" He didn't sound pleased.

"Are you all right?" She wasn't game to lean over and meet his eye.

"What was that for?" He sat up – she could just see him, a shape that must have been his head. "Did you just _elbow _me?"

"Ah, yes."

"Why?"

"Um. No reason. You startled me, that was all."

She could make out his expression now as he sat on the edge of the bed. He showed her a slightly incredulous look, muttered something she didn't quite make out, then said, "Ouch. You don't half pull your punches, do you?"

She bit her lip again. "I'm sorry?"

"This is going to _bruise_."

_This _was the man who'd been attacked by a wampa, frozen, had a hand amputated, been electrocuted half to death, been infected with carnivorous parasites, had a gangrenous leg wound, been put in a coma by an ancient Sith spirit, broken his ankle, had the skin of his back burnt off, and had more concussions than she could count? Complaining about a mere blow to the stomach? Mara crossed her arms.

Luke snorted. "You should see your face."

Mara glared at him. "I don't see what's so funny."

He shifted closer, a dark shape in the darkness. "_You_ elbowed _me_, dear."

She could feel his amusement clearly now, and realised belatedly he'd been teasing. It didn't particularly improve her mood. "Don't call me dear."

He brought his mouth close to her ear. "What shall I call you then?" His fingers were warm on her bare back, sending paradoxical shivers down her spine. "Captain Jade?"

She turned to him, resting her hand on his stomach and leaning close. "But isn't your stomach _so _sore?" she purred. "We wouldn't want to aggravate the injury, now."

He growled at her and Mara laughed in surprise, then let him smother her with warmth.

* * *

They left Mos Espa early the next morning, before even the first sun had crept over the horizon. Luke flicked her a glance as he pulled his tunic on, for there was indeed a purpling mark over his abdomen. 

"Does it hurt?" Mara winced and reached to touch his skin tentatively; it was warm against her fingers despite the chill of the pre-dawn air.

"It would be more than an understatement to say I've had worse," Luke said wryly.

"Mm. I suppose."

"It's fine, Mara."

It wasn't fine. That fight or flight mechanism on waking ran deep; it was as much a part of her as her name, and had saved her life more times that she could count. It had been trained into her from an age so early she could barely remember being without it. Teaching herself not to react adversely to a continued presence sharing her bed was not proving easy.

And she'd hurt Luke as a result. Accidentally, of course – but pain caused by accident was still pain caused. What about next time? What if it was the kind of hurt that didn't heal so quickly or so easily? She was unused to guarding herself from causing pain, and marriage created a unique position of being able to hurt in the extreme closeness it evoked.

That frightened her more than she would admit. She knew that eventually there would be some hurt; it was unrealistic to expect otherwise, and their long history had proven that they excelled at hurting one another. The thought of his ability to cause her pain made Mara uncomfortable, as it always had – probably as it had long before she'd even been aware of it; and a new facet, that of her own power to bring him hurt, brought comparable measures of disquiet in the expectation it seemed to place on her.

"Mara." Luke's voice broke her thoughts. She looked at him and found he was watching her, an odd uneasiness in his eyes. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head – it was too hard to explain. Or she just didn't want to. She didn't meet his gaze. "Nothing."

He looked at her another moment, then said, "Ah – all right." He half-turned and began to fasten the clasps of his tunic, then turned back. "Mara, really, you understand I'm not bothered. I was only joking last night."

"I know. Don't worry about it, all right?"

Maybe he sensed she didn't want to talk about it – or perhaps he just read it in her eyes. Whichever it was, Luke said nothing more. He finished dressing before she'd even started, and went to settle with their landlady. The amount of money he took didn't seem a lot to Mara, but when she queried it, he said it was the standard rate the woman had quoted him, plus a small amount more.

"A very small amount," Mara said, a little surprised. Luke had never struck her as a particularly thrifty sort of person.

"It's not small to her," Luke said. "Any more would be an insult."

"An insult?" Mara echoed.

"She'd think we were giving her money out of pity," he explained. "People don't accept charity on Tatooine. My aunt was the same. When times were hard, meat was a rarity on the dinner table. But my aunt would rather have starved than accept charity."

"Why?"

Luke gave her a long look, backed with something she didn't understand. "Wouldn't you be the same?"

Mara shook her head. "Impractical. I wouldn't like it, but I'd rather survive than go hungry."

"Hm. That's true." Luke eyed her a moment, closely, then shook his head and said, "When you don't have much else to your name – and women like my aunt didn't, and don't – I suppose pride is important to you. Everything else can be taken away, but you can guard that to your last breath. And they do."

"I see." Mara fell silent. She was gaining a clearer understanding of what Luke had come from, seeing Tatooine firsthand – of just how bleak and harsh and bright his upbringing had truly been, and how it had shaped what he became.

She was surprised at how much there was still to know about him. Before they married, before even Nirauan, she had thought she knew Luke Skywalker down to the last foible. Then there'd been their slow journey closer as they trekked through the caves, and then their moment of joining in the fire of battle, and for an instant she _had_ known him, utterly and absolutely – and had come to realise just how limited her previous understanding had been. She was still realising that. She wondered if he felt the same way.

They left after that. Despite the early hour and lack of light, the city teemed with activity. Luke purchased a hardy-looking landspeeder for their trip after much tapping of parts in the engine and muttered conference with the dealer; to Mara's surprise, he didn't even glance at the newer models to one end of the yard. "Durability is what we want," he said when she asked. "Sleek is nice, but… impractical."

"Ah." Mara wondered if she should be concerned.

Luke purchased supplies and enough water to last the three-day cross-desert span to Mos Eisley. Mara let him barter, having none of his ingrained knowledge on what they would need in the desert. She'd done some research, back when she'd first visited Tatooine, but that was a long time ago and she'd been focused on other things.

With supplies and water, and a transport, they headed out into the desert. The first sun was close to rising, its light touching the empty horizon as they sped along. Luke drove, the wind blowing his hair back from his face. He drove like a fighter pilot: acceleration and exhilaration, alarming and precise. Han, apparently, was the same. Leia had admitted privately to Mara that she avoided flying with either of them when she could; but then Leia had never been a pilot and flew only when she had to. Mara fell somewhere between the two extremes. Flying didn't give her the level of exhilaration Luke would never admit it gave him, but she did appreciate the joy of speed and precision, and so had no problems with the way he flew. She piloted her airspeeder in much the same way – and that was something she didn't intend to give up doing, so he would have to get used to the passenger seat at least some of the time when they returned to Coruscant.

They covered a lot of ground in their first day in the desert. The movement of sand passing was unexpectedly lulling: Mara found her eyelids growing heavy as she watched it blur past. Luke had suggested she cover her head and shoulders to protect her skin from the bite of the suns, and Mara grudgingly accepted the wisdom of the notion. It wasn't fair, she thought irritably, that Luke's skin could tan where hers just burnt.

They stopped for a while in the middle of the day, when the heat of the suns was at its most severe, stretching their legs in the shadows of a rock outcropping. In mid-afternoon they set off again, travelling a way after the suns sank in a spectacularly colourful sunset. They made camp under the stars, Luke starting a small fire from their supplies.

"Are you sure about that?" Mara asked dubiously, watching him. "It's going to be visible for kilometres around on terrain like this."

Luke glanced up at her, his features soft in the flickering firelight. "There's no one to see it," he said simply.

"What about Sand People?"

Luke shook his head. "We're still close enough to the city that Raiders shouldn't be a problem. When we get deeper into the Wastes, we'll have to be careful."

"Hm." Mara peered into the darkness a moment more, then shrugged and seated herself in the sand by the fire. Its warmth was welcome against the chill of the night winds rising off the desert, once she let herself relax enough to appreciate it.

They ate, then sat together in silence. The fire crackled softly, tiny embers flying up to join the clear stars in the dark sky above. The smell of smoke drifted and danced with the hard, cold scent of the night, pale as it twisted into darkness.

After a time, Luke shifted closer. Mara wordlessly leaned against him, and he put his arms around her. He smelled of sun and sand, dry and warm; his woven tunic was soft against her cheek.

Mara closed her eyes, and eventually let herself sleep.

* * *

The following days passed quickly. They travelled mostly by morning and afternoon, avoiding the searing heat of midday where they could. Luke gave up his fires as they travelled further into the desert, and Mara noted subtle signs around dawn and dusk: he watched shadows carefully, and his hands grew more still, making each movement precise. He was wary; she was warier, scanning for movement amongst the dunes. 

He must have noticed her sudden caution, because he assured her the Raiders were rare in this part of the desert – apparently they preferred the rocky Jundland Wastes on the other side of Anchorhead.

"So why are _you _watching shadows?" she asked narrowly.

He cleared his throat, and didn't attempt to reassure her again.

Speeding under the double suns on the third day of their journey, Mara glimpsed a bulky shape far away on the horizon, wavering with heat and distance. Pulling herself higher in the seat, she narrowed her eyes. Sometimes the eyes rebelled against the sameness of the landscape by throwing up odd shapes and images, but this one showed no sign of flickering to nothing. A rock outcropping? No, the shape wasn't right. Too angular.

The metal edge of the windshield was hot against her stomach through the fabric of her tunic as she leaned forward. The wind riffled hot and dry through her drawn-back hair. "Luke?" she asked. "You know what that is?"

"Hm?" Luke, staring somewhere off ahead, blinked and followed the line of her finger. "Probably an old wreck. There are a few out here."

"Wreck? A landspeeder, you mean?" What an ugly way to die.

He shook his head. "Spaceship. In the old days, before the Empire, battles between pirates and rival smugglers would often spill into the atmosphere. The loser ended up part of the landscape, so to speak. You come across them every so often." Despite his matter-of-fact tone, he was eyeing the distant wreck with barely-concealed interest.

Mara bent and rummaged through the scattered belongings at her feet for the macrobinoculars, raising them to examine the shape. "It is a ship," she confirmed. "Crashed hard, from the look of it."

"We might as well take a look. In fact, it's probably a good idea."

Something in his tone woke alarm bells; Mara lowered the macrobinoculars to check his expression. There wasn't much there. "Problem?"

"Maybe. I think a storm's brewing."

"Oh?" Mara glanced around and saw only flat sand and endless sky. "And you know this how…?"

"That faint haze over the horizon," Luke explained. "And there's a certain smell. Kind of sharp and dry."

Mara couldn't smell anything, and had to squint to catch the haze he referred to. But then she hadn't been raised on featureless plains where sandstorms were sudden and often deadly. "If you say so."

"I do." He quirked an eyebrow. "If I'm wrong, at least we've got an interesting detour."

"Ah yes. A rusting old wreck."

"I know you're secretly intrigued."

"Am I?"

"Absolutely."

Mara sighed. There wasn't much she could say to that. "Sometimes you're insufferable."

"Thank you."

She flicked him a glance, and he smiled. Mara narrowed her eyes at the horizon. It was all right, she consoled herself. Her payback could wait…

* * *

So they lay staring at the underside of a rusting ancient spaceship as sand-laden winds howled past a mere few metres away. The storm was so furious that it seemed like night: the light of the suns was blotted so thoroughly it was as though they didn't exist. 

"What kind of ship was it, I wonder? And did any of the crew survive the crash?" Mara startled herself, speaking the random musings aloud. The hiss of sand over sand was eerie; it sounded as though it had no end.

Luke shifted a little closer at her side, his voice soft. "You think it's haunted? They always used to say the desert ate the souls of those it took."

Mara scowled in the semi-darkness. That sounded like a line. "If you're trying to get me to snuggle, you're going about it the wrong way."

"I can try." He leaned closer yet and slid his hand under her loose tunic, brushing his fingers across her stomach and raising goosebumps on her skin.

"My," Mara purred. "I never knew flying sand would bring out the romantic in you, farmboy."

Luke laughed quietly, his body warm against hers through the softness of their clothes. "_You_ bring out the romantic in me," he murmured into her ear.

Mara snorted gently. "Like that's hard to do." But she lifted her hands and wound them through his hair, looking into his eyes that were the colour of a sky she currently couldn't see. He kissed her lips softly, and they lay together in the semi-dark.

The storm passed after what seemed like hours; according to Luke it had actually been short as sandstorms came, lasting roughly an hour and a half. Shaking off the sand in her clothes, sand that seeped everywhere and that she felt with increasing certainty she would _never_ fully get rid of, Mara told him in no uncertain terms that he was lucky it hadn't lasted that long.

Unfazed, Luke caught her around the waist, mumbling something into her hair about how they would have managed to occupy themselves. She lifted an eyebrow at him, and he smirked and wandered off around the wreck. Shaking her head, Mara followed.

The once-spaceship was solidly buried in the dunes, over half submerged beneath the sand. The gangly make suggested it was originally pre-Empire, probably from somewhere in the glory days of the Republic, hundreds of years before Mara's birth or Luke's. It was a monster of a ship, as the older ones usually were; even mostly buried in the sand, it still towered over them as they explored, casting a long, deep shadow.

They returned to the landspeeder, tucked safely in the sheltered section that had been their harbour from the storm. Luke slowed and put a hand on the rusted metal of the ship. Looking up, he said soberly, "They're not far wrong in saying that the desert eats such trespassers. Another fifty years, and the dunes will have swallowed this completely."

It wasn't a statement that asked or required a response. Mara crossed her arms and watched as Luke trailed his fingers down the roughness of the once-smooth metal, crouching to run the rust-stained sand at the base through his fingers. "It'll all become sand, eventually," he murmured. "Wear down other trespassers. Full circle."

The sand trickled between his fingers and flew away in a spray of brown, caught in the remnant breeze and the glow of the now-dying suns.

Lying beside him late that night, Mara watched the cold light of the moons wash over the desert. Luke's slow breathing tickled the hair at the back of her neck, but she wasn't inclined to move. Luke tended to sleep easily and quickly, though lightly; Mara, usually, could fall asleep quickly as well. Some nights it was difficult. Sometimes she went for months without being able to sleep properly, never for a solid reason – at least, never one that deigned to raise itself from the restive murk of her unconscious.

She wondered if that would remain the same, now that she was married, or whether the inexplicable sleeplessness would pass now there was someone she trusted to watch her back while she slept.

In any case, she was awake tonight. She shifted slightly, and Luke in turn stirred but did not wake. His fingers brushed the skin of her stomach as he moved; his right hand, the bionic one he was always slightly hesitant to touch her with. It was only ever a miniscule faltering, and she suspected he was completely unaware of it. Most of the time he seemed to forget that the hand was in fact a skilfully crafted machine – or perhaps he only gave that impression. Mara wasn't sure whether it was possible to forget such a thing, whether it was possible for him to look at the hand and not be reminded of the loss it represented. It was the kind of thing that had to be experienced to understood.

It was strange, she reflected, staring at the clear sky, how distance from the Jedi and the New Republic seemed to free Luke. Not that he was trapped by those things, as such. But they definitely weighed on his shoulders while he was there.

It would be nice if they could take off around the galaxy with a mobile school for Jedi, as they'd cheerfully discussed doing not long ago. But Mara could see the lines in the sand as well as Luke could, and that wasn't the way the Jedi were heading. That wasn't the way the galaxy was heading.

And there was that odd, perplexing vision she'd seen on the _Chimaera… _Their future, joys and pains – and a strange edge, a hint of something coming, of some darkness or threat facing the galaxy. Whatever that danger was, she was sure that Luke would be at the forefront. The will of the Force was increasingly pushing him into the role of leader, a role he'd never sought but could and had surely earned.

Like anything, he played the role with all his heart, and gave it everything. It concerned Mara, and always had, how deeply he gave. She feared one day he'd give too much to a galaxy that took all and returned too little. Hopefully she'd be able to tamper those self-martyring tendencies somewhat now that they were married. Surely Luke had proven with blood and pain that he was not his father, and more than repaid whatever imagined debt he might owe the galaxy?

Little wonder he sometimes felt burdened, Mara thought. Little wonder he guarded himself as he did. She far preferred the Luke Skywalker she'd rediscovered at Nirauan, infuriating and illogical in all his uncertainty and ego, to the carefully composed stranger who'd greeted her at the academy on her passing visits in the years previous.

More than once, it had occurred to her to wonder whether they would have ever made it to the point they were at now had he not come for her on Nirauan. Had they not had opportunity to snarl and hurt and kick down the barriers they'd built, together and apart, over the years. Would Luke have swallowed his pride and asked for help to overcome his problems with the Force and with his past errors in judgement? Would he have considered coming to her if so? Would she have overcome her own confused melding of stubbornness, conceit, and apprehension to approach him herself, rather than watching him fumble through his self-created mire at a distance?

She suspected not, but it was impossible to say. Time spent thinking about might-have-beens and might-not-have-beens was clearly time wasted, in any case, as tempting or as disquieting as those thoughts might be.

Mara turned, under the cold moons of the Tatooine sky, into the warmth of her husband's embrace. He stirred, mumbled something, and shifted closer. Mara watched a dust-eddy dance on a silvered rise beyond his shoulder. It dispersed to the wind, and she closed her eyes. When she slept, she dreamt disturbing dreams of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Luke against a galaxy of stars that winked out one by one in a tide that crept ever closer; but the first light of the suns pierced the dreams in the morning, and they vanished as quickly as the dust eddy had fallen away the night before.

Rubbing her eyes as Luke teased her – he seemed never to have lost his farmer's internal clock and had no problem rising at horrendously early hours, to her disgust – Mara banished the shreds of the dream from her thoughts, and they set off for Mos Eisley.


	2. Part 2

Mos Eisley was larger than Mos Espa had been, less run-down but somehow far seedier. It lay between rocky rises that formed the outer edges of the unforgiving Jundland Wastes. The city sprawled in two untidy sections, old and new virtually indistinguishable.

The traffic running through the city appeared to consist largely of landspeeders, Jawas and humans on various mounts, and a variety of droid-run smaller transports – all moving without any apaarent system of road rules or regulation. Luke coasted through the chaos with relative ease, eliciting a profanity or two from passersby who seemed to judge it their duty to impede the flow. He shook his head as they passed a hobbled old woman who shook her fist and bellowed, "Slow down!" – "I swear the same woman used to tell me off in Anchorhead twenty years ago," he muttered – and swore under his breath as a spindly droid piloting a squat transport swerved wildly into the flow of traffic before them. Mara tamped down a smile.

They stayed four nights in Mos Eisley, in an inn with an actual refresher and real beds. While in the desert, portable 'fresher kits had sufficed for their hygiene needs – but, Mara reflected, however effective the things were, they just couldn't recreate the clean feeling of washing in real water. Luke seemed vaguely uneasy, and Mara was sure he felt guilty on some level as though the lush refresher unit was wasteful. He refused to admit anything when she prodded, though; Mara limited her time under the water, in any case.

Really, he hadn't needed to go to such lengths – she would have been content with far more basic lodgings. Surely he knew that? Mara considered saying so, but decided against it. Luke could be inexplicably touchy about such things, she'd found. A comment now might sound like criticism or complaint, which would be ungracious considering his effort to please her... as perplexing as that effort was.

Mara gave up and decided to just enjoy it.

The next few days were leisurely: Luke showed her some of the sights of Mos Eisley… or what qualified as such, on Tatooine. They walked through the markets in the newer quarter of the city, trying to guess which stallholders were hawking shadier goods beneath the glossy outlander-oriented front on display. Probably all of them, Mara suspected. Despite the seeming innocuousness of the newer sections of the town, there was a darkness that ran somewhere not far beneath the surface. Mara had been in enough sinkholes in her life to sense it, a feeling that had nothing to do with the Force and everything to do with instinct and survival.

They received a few odd propositions as they walked – particularly towards the darkening hours – but saw nothing overtly sinister. Mara had opportunity to note as she'd noted many times before Luke's strange ability to be at once utterly unthreatening, and yet to allow an edge of something else that said, softly but with certainty, _I won't be easily crossed_

Her own edge was, she liked to think, somewhat less subdued. But between them both they presented a discouraging enough front that no thieves or muggers approached in the darkness to ruin their evening stroll.

Luke showed her the old wreck that the community of Mos Eisley had originally sprung itself around, and told her the story of its past: that somewhere in history's mists, an immense vessel named the _Dowager Queen _had crashed into the rocky sand of the Grand Mesa Plateau. The survivors, having lived through fire and fury, had little choice but to eke a living from the dead soil around the skeleton of their ship. They'd settled around the ruins, first themselves, then their children, then their children's children. The city of Mos Eisley ensued. As the city's trade and docking facilities grew, smugglers and outlaws found it an amenable place for those seeking anonymity, and so it came to be known as the pirate city… eventually outranking the ancient settlement at Anchorhead, close by Tatooine's standards at only a few hundred kilometres away.

Now the _Dowager Queen_ formed the iris of the concentric older section of the city, a haven for criminals and the dispossessed. Most of the trade and commercial activity was in the more prosperous newer section, along with most of the city's many spacedocks.

For a ship of such impressive history, she was rather disappointing. Leaning haphazardly, in far worse condition than the wreck that had been their harbour from the storm a few days ago, the _Dowager Queen_ was bulky and rusting and ancient.

"I can remember seeing her on a holo once, when I was young," Luke mused, standing by Mara's side. "We used to try to frighten each other with stories of the ghosts she'd carried here, ghosts that had seeped into the sands and onto the wind, seeking children to replace the ones lost."

"Sounds like fun." Mara arched a dubious eyebrow.

Luke smiled somewhat wanly. "It wasn't, really. I was younger than the other children, and small for my age besides. Trying to frighten me in particular was generally the aim." He shook his head slightly as though brushing away the wisp of – _unpleasant?_ – memories, and turned his attention back to the ship. "I was more interested in the fact that she'd actually sailed the stars once. Been up there, all over, visiting who knew how many planets… That was exciting."

Mara turned her attention back to the ship as well, but her thoughts were elsewhere. That was new, that flicker of a shadow she glimpsed in Luke's eyes, the old hurt. He didn't speak of his childhood very often, and rarely like that. She'd always known it couldn't have been all sunshine and skyhoppers. He had been genuinely unhappy here, after all.

They even stopped in at the cantina where it had all begun, late in the afternoon on the third day of their visit. Luke screwed up his nose as they walked from the brightly-lit street into the dankness of the bar. "Hasn't changed much," he muttered.

A motley band was playing the Tatooine blues off somewhere in the corner, while aliens of varying appearances sat in the semi-darkness of booths and at the grubby bar. Rank-smelling smoke drifted through the air, and a low murmur filled the room under the sound of the music, populated occasionally with a snort of laughter or an alien trill.

They took a booth, and Luke pointed out where he'd been accosted by a pair of bar-denizens twenty-odd years ago, and to the corner where he'd met Han and Chewie. "Han had a bar wench on his lap the first time I saw him," Luke added with a glimmer of a smirk. "I've never told Leia that."

Mara snorted. "I doubt she'd be surprised."

"Probably not." Luke shook his head. "Sometimes I just don't understand those two."

"They probably say the same thing about us. I can just imagine the private conversations when we showed up engaged on the _Chimaera_."

"Funnily, Han didn't seem at all surprised. Leia was, but she covered it well."

"Mm. She had definite reservations to begin with." Mara shifted her drink, watching the pool of condensation gleam in the smoky light.

Luke hesitated a moment. "Leia likes you, Mara. She always has."

It was a nice attempt, but Mara didn't buy it for a minute. "She's always respected me. That's not the same as liking someone, or trusting them." Luke began to object – he was going to insist on this one, she could see it in his eyes – but Mara spoke on. "The first time she met me, I swore blind that I was going to kill her adored brother, remember?"

"Well, yes," Luke admitted. "But I trusted you then anyway."

"Which just shows how insane you are, Skywalker."

He looked at her a moment, then showed her a slow, full smile – she swore he turned that on just to spite her, sometimes. It always threw her utterly off-balance. "Things worked out in the end, didn't they?"

"I suppose," Mara agreed grudgingly. "But Leia's a politician, and she doesn't trust easily. Likely she's never understood why you do." _Mara_ still had difficulty with that one.

"I don't know – Leia's not like most politicians." Luke made an odd face, briefly. "Although she is very good at what she does when she wants to be."

"Mm. Anyway. I'm not saying we don't get on now, just that she might have been rather dubious at first."

"She never said anything to me, if so. I guess she knew better." Reaching across the dirty table, Luke took her fingers and squeezed gently. "I wouldn't have paid much attention."

Mara forced herself to return his smile. They'd had enough criticism as it was on the announcement of their engagement, from the strangest and most inappropriate corners. Some of it had hurt Luke: not the slurs levelled against him, though they were without exception grossly and inexcusably unwarranted; but those flung at her. Mara had just been angry. What right did any of _them_, that undefined mass that sat in judgement, have to pry into their affairs? To make accusations, to try to mar what they had found together?

She would have to get used to it, she supposed. Luckily she was thick-skinned; it was the wrong family to be marrying into if she wanted to be anonymous.

They stayed an evening in the cantina, cosy in their private booth with its dim lighting and grimy tabletop; an island in the sea of remembrance, forging something new from the richness and pain of past events drifting beneath the bright music and fetid smoke. Luke told her old stories, his fingers moving across the tabletop and opening on the smoky air as he illustrated each point. Mara laughed until she choked, somewhat ungraciously.

Luke looked at her and smiled. "You're drunk."

"I am not," she said, indignant.

His smile widened. "You _think_ you're not. I told you that stuff was strong." He indicated the half-finished drink before her, dark orange in the light.

"And I told you I can handle a strong drink." The room _was _a little unsteady.

"Okay."

A little less certainly, Mara said, "I didn't even have much."

"There are two Starshine Surprises in that thing. It doesn't take much."

"Mph. Why didn't you warn me?"

He laughed, and stood. "Come on. Let's head home."

* * *

They didn't end up heading straight back to their inn; Mara decided that if she had to be even a little inebriated, she wasn't going to do it alone. There was no way she was putting up with that smug smile all night. She even managed to drag Luke dancing with her in a brightly lit bar a few doors down from the notorious Chulman's Spaceport Cantina. Despite his protestations that he didn't want to dance, he seemed to relax once they began, even teaching Mara some of the steps native to Tatooine music. After a while, Mara grew tired of the sporadic beat of the Tatooine blues musicians; Luke wordlessly put his arms around her, Mara slid hers around his waist, and they danced together to their own slower beat. 

They were both a little fuzzy in the morning. Luke grumbled about his headache and how it was her fault until Mara half-seriously threatened to elbow him out of bed again; he then wisely desisted.

When they were both a little more awake, Luke suggested another drive in the landspeeder. There was something enigmatic in his manner, so, intrigued, Mara agreed. They ended up somewhere on the outskirts of the town, where the sand in the streets was thicker and the houses were decayed and empty.

"Where are we?" Mara asked curiously.

"I want to show you something," Luke said as he set the landspeeder down. He swung out, crossing to take her hand as she climbed out rather more gingerly. Normally she would bridle at the solicitude, but her head felt a little tender and she couldn't be bothered summoning the energy to resist. She hadn't mentioned the headache, but Luke seemed to have picked up on it anyway – perhaps through the Force, perhaps through her body language.

They walked a way through the desolate streets. Luke explained that this was one of the older sections of the town, but didn't elaborate on why it was so special. Mara bit her tongue and waited, none-too-patiently.

Luke clambered down a sandy ridge beyond the buildings, and Mara followed. She was startled to hear a noise, one so unexpected that it took a few moments to even identify: the sound of water, bubbling softly against rock. Mara's boot skidded on a treacherous patch of sand as she came to a halt. "Is that…?" she asked in amazement.

"Come on." Luke reached for her hand, tugging her onwards.

The source of the noise was a pool perhaps four metres across and very deep if the darkness of the water was any indication. It was sunken into a sheltered corner of sandy rock, rough cliffs rising around it. On one side, an edge of durocrete peeked through the pale rock, steadily leaking water from a discoloured crack.

The ledge they stood on was a meter above the water, covered with a spray of sand and dappled on one edge with sunlight. The air rising off the water was cool. Mara shook her head in wonder. "Underground reserve?" she hazarded.

Luke was watching the water, his arms crossed, his posture an unthinking semblance of parade rest. He nodded absently. "They say there were rivers and seas here once, millennia ago. This is the closest thing Tatooine has left."

Mara crouched, eyeing the durocrete behind the rock on the other side. "Mos Eisley's water supply comes from this?"

"Some. The rest comes from moisture farmers in surrounding districts."

The sunlight was playing at one edge of the water, its light glinting off to dance across the rocky wall above in flickering, uneven patterns. There was something vaguely hypnotic about the water, so deep and dark and secret, after so long seeing only sand. Mara had noted Luke's fascination with water, perplexing after so many years away from Tatooine's parched climate. She thought she was beginning to understand.

"My uncle brought me here, once," Luke said from above her. "I was very young, I think, because when I grew older I wasn't allowed to come to Mos Eisley. Too much danger, probably. There was more Imperial activity here by that stage." He stood silently for a few moments, then said, "I can remember the water, and my uncle. Not his words, exactly, but that he seemed – well, almost reverent." A pause, oddly pensive. Then Luke added, "I suppose this was the most water he ever saw."

Mara watched the light dance over the water. After a while, Luke sat by her side. "There's something very sad about that," he murmured, very softly: more to himself than to her, Mara thought.

She leaned against his shoulder, and he put his arm around her. The water bubbled and whispered as they sat watching it, eating away at the desert rock millimetre by millimetre as it had over an immeasurable span of years.

Luke brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead. "How's your head?"

"Fine," Mara replied, as he'd surely known she would. In truth it was still a little sore, but the coolness and peace of the shaded pool helped.

There was another easy silence. "I wonder if he ever brought my aunt here," Luke mused after a time. "She lived in this area, I think, when she was young. I've heard it's quite the spot for romantic liaisons…"

"Ulterior motives, Skywalker?" Mara murmured.

"Maybe." He slid his hands around her waist and leaned to brush her lips gently with his own. "Is that a problem?"

Mara shook her head at him mock-chidingly, and he smiled. Together, they watched the dark waters ripple against the rocky walls.

Closing her eyes, Mara listened to the gentle lapping of the water against its sedimentary prison. Luke ran his fingertips down her arm, and Mara smiled.

The water whispered softly on below.

* * *

"So, where to now…" In their plush hotel room, Luke drew his finger idly over a map of the area that they'd purchased from a local vendor, now spread before him on the bed. Mos Eisley lay at the centre of the discoloured drawing, surrounded by roughly-drawn rises. A distance away lay Anchorhead, and beyond it the Jundland Wastes. Pausing over Anchorhead, Luke tapped his fingers on the flimsiplast, frowned, then looked up at Mara. "Any thoughts?" 

Sitting on the other side of the bed, Mara tilted her head and frowned. After a few seconds, Luke leaned and prodded her leg. "Hello?"

She glared at him. "I'm thinking." For a Jedi Master, he could be exceptionally impatient. It was a point she would have to note next time he extolled the quality at her in that insufferably righteous tone he was liable to take on such occasions…

"Sometime this year," Luke muttered as he leaned back over his map.

Mara flicked another annoyed glance, then said, "How about Jabba's Palace?"

Luke's head rose. The banter was gone from his eyes as he stared at her, replaced with something careful and sober and… taken aback. "Jabba's Palace?"

Uncertain of her footing, Mara feigned casualness. "Why not?"

"We can head out that way," Luke said after a moment's pause. He ran his fingers north, then back around towards Anchorhead. "Jabba's Palace, then." He looked at her closely. "You've been thinking about this for a while?"

"Not… really." It had just occurred to her, in fact, but had come with a certainty that stemmed from somewhere deep inside. She had unsettled business with that place, she supposed. That place, and its memories.

Luke didn't seem to believe her – but he didn't push. "All right. So… Jabba's Palace." He tapped the map thoughtfully. "Haven't been there in – ages. Years."

"You've been back since the first time?" Mara shifted on bed to face him.

"Um. Yes. About, oh, six years ago – Han and I visited chasing info about the Hutts. Some superweapon or other, I think. I can't really remember now."

He seemed faintly uneasy—ah. Six years ago. That would be during the Callista era, then. Just before the woman left him, in fact, if Mara recalled correctly. "Wasn't that the time I stopped by Yavin with information you already had?"

"Ah – yes. That was it."

Now that had been an uncomfortable visit. Fumbling over admitting why she'd chosen to visit with information that could as easily have been transmitted via the HoloNet or to his sister – information he in fact already had – when she couldn't pinpoint the reason herself. And him very clearly preoccupied with his girlfriend and her issues all the while.

Looking back, Mara thought she'd done it mostly to make certain he remembered she existed – without any discernable success, at the time. It hadn't been his best period, then, so soon after the debacle at Byss.

And Callista… Luke's long-departed former love. Willowy and delicate, the former Jedi Knight had been as far opposite Mara as it was possible to be. She'd also been intensely wary, for whatever reason; Mara, in turn, hadn't liked her, but nor had she particularly disliked her. If anything, Mara supposed she'd felt almost sorry the woman, as unhappy as she had seemed to be. Luke had hardly been equipped to deal with her needs, stumbling as he had been through the after-effects of one or two spectacularly disastrous decisions of his own. Mara had rather suspected at the time that he'd understood less of Callista's unhappiness than she had even in that brief, awkward meeting. And Callista had not seemed the type to bring such faults to his attention, unlike Mara.

Mara still wondered who or what had given Callista ideas about she and Luke back then. And how far the woman had believed her denial; she had seemed very dubious.

Speaking of dubious, Luke's expression as he looked at her now was interesting indeed. _Bringing up your lost love on our honeymoon, _Mara thought with some irony. _Yes, Luke. Well done. _But then she had managed to remind them both of the less-than-auspicious circumstances of their first near-encounter at Jabba's Palace, which wasn't much better.

So, to cover her own burst of awkwardness, Mara only remarked, "I haven't been back since my first visit. I heard the B'omarr monks have taken the palace back, is that true?"

"Yes, I think so. They built it originally, centuries ago…" His relief was obvious.

_It's a good thing we have a lifetime, _Mara reflected ruefully. _This marriage thing is going to take some work.

* * *

_

The trip to Jabba's Palace was long, but sped past in a blur of flat sand and gleaming skies. The landscape, such as it was, began to look more familiar to Mara as they neared the ancient structure. It had been over fifteen years since she'd last been there, and she had been rather preoccupied at the time, so she wasn't certain whether the familiarity was real or a product of her imagination. 

They arrived in the afternoon of a featureless steaming day. Heat rose off the sand in waves, almost visible in the still air as they crossed toward the door. Luke walked in front; Mara followed, shielding her eyes from the suns with one hand as she gazed up. She'd forgotten how _big_ the palace was, hulking against the sky like a small mountain. It was far more run-down than she remembered, but no less impressive for that.

A gust of wind blew around her. She'd taken in Mos Eisley to wearing the looser, plainer clothes of the native women: chiefly because they were more comfortable in the heat, though Luke had smiled an odd little smile when she'd first donned local garb. "Melding already, Mara?" he'd asked, and she was a little disconcerted by both the realisation that there was an old instinct at play, seeking camouflage; and by the way ever-candid Luke Skywalker had read that instinct so quickly.

But those clothes hadn't felt right here, so Mara had gone back to the litheness and efficiency of dark pants and sleeveless tunic with a matching black bolero. Luke's eyebrows had risen a little when she'd dressed, but he'd made no comment.

He walked ahead of her now, wearing tunic and trousers in a dark shade – not black, but close. More like a deep grey, shadows in a cloudless night.

A spray of sand coloured the air between them momentarily, carried on a gust of wind. Mara looked up again at the palace rising above them.

Twenty-two she'd been, last she'd come here – or close enough; she'd never been completely certain of her age, and Palpatine had never seen fit to inform her – young and arrogant and so very stupid, raised and shaped to do her master's bidding, without even the dignity of slavery to hold a semblance of autonomy. A pawn, she'd been, and she'd been proud of it. Mara often thought that was the greatest injury of all.

And she'd come to this place, fifteen years ago, without any particular emotion at all. Kill a man who was her master's enemy, a threat to his rule and sovereignty, an affront to order. That was her duty. That was all. She hadn't even hated, then; not yet. That came after, when that man became her sole failure, and then her every failure as he destroyed the breakers of her carefully checked life.

She'd studied Luke Skywalker meticulously before the mission. She knew he came from the wastes of Tatooine, from a farm that barely rated in a planet full of tedium. She knew he'd accompanied the hoary old Jedi Vader had killed on the Death Star, rescued the traitor Organa, and been instrumental in the destruction of the Death Star and the murder of Imperial personnel there. He'd been a Rebel pilot – an exceptional one, Imperial commanders grudgingly admitted in analysts' reports – founding and commanding the notorious Rogue Squadron that caused the Empire so much inconvenience. He was Force-sensitive to some degree, an aspiring Jedi, agents of disorder and treachery in themselves. He'd fought Vader on Bespin, and there things grew complicated. Vader severed his hand, but then – this last conveyed in personal conference with the Emperor – then, the traitorous Sith had tried to entice Skywalker to join him in overthrowing the Emperor.

Whether Skywalker had agreed was uncertain, but… he was a _Jedi_, after all…

So Palpatine had played her like putty. So she came to Jabba's Palace in dancer's garb, filled with righteousness, waiting for the moment Skywalker would surface, wholly ready to perform her mission as she'd performed every other, with lethal competence. Would she feel regret as his blood ran on sand? Would she hesitate at the last moment, his tow-blonde hair, the precise colour of sand in sunlight, dead in her sights? Would she wonder what she was taking from the galaxy?

Of course not. Had she remembered how to do those things, then? Had she ever known to begin with?

Mara realised she'd slowed and all but stopped on her approach to the Palace. The suns beat down on her bare head. The dry wind blew from the barren heart of the desert, piling sand against her boots.

Luke halted ahead of her. He turned, and his eyes found hers. There was a silence. Then Luke walked back and took her arm, gently twining it through his. "You need to go in there," he said, his voice conversational.

She pulled away, irritation flaring. "Don't give me that Force hokum."

Luke re-took her arm, and said evenly, "This has nothing to do with the Force. It has to do with you, and all those demons that don't exist."

Now that wasn't fair. Mara looked into his eyes and drew a complete blank: there were a thousand things she should have been able to counter with, that she _wanted _to counter with, and she could bring herself to use none of them.

She hated it when he read her so well; and yet no one else could, or had ever, cared enough to do so. Perhaps that was why she pushed him away so hard at times.

"All right," she murmured. "Let's take a wander."

* * *

The large rusted door was jammed half-shut. Luke lifted his hand and summoned the Force – but before he could do anything, Mara flicked him a sardonic glance and ducked through the meter-high gap under the lip of the door. Luke sheepishly ducked through after her. "Or we could do that," he muttered. 

Mara threw a saccharine smile over her shoulder. "Songbirds—"

"In an ore crushing facility, I know." Silhouetted against the light spilling through the low gap, he was a dark shape in the gloom, shifting as he ran a hand through his hair. "Old habits die hard, I guess."

Mara grimaced. "Don't I know it."

Luke's hand touched her shoulder briefly – the left hand, Mara knew without looking – and they walked on. The gloom took on definition as Mara's eyes slowly adjusted. The passageway was wide and high, the walls carved of pale ancient stone. Sandy dust and strewn debris littered the rough floor. The air was cold after the heat of the day outside, and the silence was vast, heavy with the burden of centuries. The sound of their boots seemed to violate the old quiet, and Mara instinctively softened her steps.

Luke had taken her arm again as they walked forward; the touch was gentle, supporting rather than restrictive. But Mara needed space – she needed to do this on her own. Married they might be, but she would rather die than let him fight her battles for her. Squeezing his hand – the right hand, just as warm as the other – she eased away.

The corridor seemed abandoned, and Mara wondered if Luke had been wrong about the B'omarr monks having re-taken the ancient structure. Then she caught a flicker at the edge of her eye, something moving in shadow – a glimpse of spindly legs, of dark metal glinting – and she caught her breath, hand darting to the blaster strapped to her side.

Luke was quicker, by her side in an instant, a fleeting brush of his fingers over her wrist urging restraint. "B'omarr," he said, inclining his head toward the shape. "Please forgive our invasion of your sanctuary. We come seeking peace of our own and bring no ill will."

There was a skittering sound as the figure moved forward – not entirely out of the shadows, but closer to the dim light. It was undeniably spider-like, and Mara could make out the shape of the disembodied brain floating in clear liquid where a head should have been. It made her skin crawl. Her fingers itched to draw the blaster.

"Greetings in return, stranger," drifted a mechanical voice from the shadows. It sounded old, and far from human. "What peace do you seek in our sanctuary?"

_Not _the literally disembodied kind, Mara wanted Luke to stress, but of course he was too tactful to state the obvious. "My wife and I both visited here a number of years ago, during the lifetime of Jabba the Hutt. We wish to redress some old… experiences."

"Ah." Mara could have sworn that there was sadness in the alien voice. "Much done was here in those times that we regret. This sanctuary was not built for such things." It paused and added quietly, "These walls hold many tales of suffering and excess from that era. In times of silence, they speak. We listen and weep."

Mara slid her hand around Luke's upper arm, shifting her stance to be a little closer. Luke glanced at her, then looked back at the monk. He shifted slightly, as though to shield her with his body. Mara was obscurely amused. Was this his instinctive response her movement, or was he disturbed by the monk as well beneath his courteous façade?

"If you or your bondmate were a victim of Jabba, you have our sympathy and regret," the B'omarr went on in its eerily flat voice. "You may wander the temple as you wish, and we pray you find peace."

"We were not victims of his, as such," Luke said, and inclined his head again. "But your compassion is appreciated. May you also find peace, B'omarr."

The spider-monk made an odd motion as though returning Luke's half-bow, and withdrew into the darkness. The sound of its metallic legs on the sandy stone floor sent a shiver up Mara's spine that was purely primordial.

"That was interesting," she murmured.

He shifted a little. "Mm. Better than the last one I met. He was an old enemy of Jabba's. Let's say he didn't seek B'omarr enlightenment as… voluntarily… as some."

Mara grimaced. "Nasty."

"I wonder if he's still around?" Luke was looking after the other monk thoughtfully.

"If you're thinking of going looking for him, you're on your own. Those things give me the creeps."

Luke smiled as he turned. "Don't tell me Mara Jade is afraid of spiders?"

"Only ones bigger than I am."

* * *

They made their way to what had been Jabba's throne room, a dark and still foul-smelling place. Mara drifted away from Luke, moving into the shadows at the edge of the room as he wandered to the middle, where a stray beam of light fell through dusty air. 

Pacing the raised outer edge, Mara found herself counting and calculating. The bounty hunters had stood _here_, those that Jabba invited to his inner sanctum. Fett, Gershan… Most of them were dead now. Here'd been his bevy of henchmen, guards and small-time criminals: the Hutt-king's court. Scum, every one of them.

And here had stood the dancers. Hardened and bitter, some of them, with long years of suffering in their eyes. Some of them were young and stupid, newly abducted or purchased. And Mara, for a short while, there as Arica.

Mara raised her eyes, and a strange chill touched her. She'd stood here. Hidden by the crowd, but with a clear shot over the shoulder of a hulking guard before her. Scantily-clad in her filmy dancer's garb, but lethal with a blaster at her hip, glaring down—

At Luke, who had stood almost exactly where he was standing now, pale light spilling down over his shoulders, dust motes dancing around his hair. His head lowered, his attention on the sandy ground – on the grate, through which he'd fallen almost to his death fifteen years ago…

For an instant, standing frozen in molds cast by images of the past, it was to Mara as though there were two Lukes: the self-important young Jedi in cloak and hood of fifteen years ago, hands clasped, his hair shining as he tilted his head, delivering his grand speech for the lives of his friends to a disdainful crime lord—

—and the Luke of now, her Luke, standing in dark grey, his head lowered, his pose thoughtful. A little heavier, a lot older, wiser and more weary.

And the Mara of then, the Mara devoted to her empire and her master, who craved accomplishment as others craved attention or love, drawing the small blaster from folds at the waist of her dancer's suit and raising it in a certain grip, aiming the barrel at the head of the man who stood between her and her duty.

And tensing her finger—

And feeling the hard tip of a blaster barrel in her own side.

So her plans had been foiled, and so Luke Skywalker had become her first and most damning failure.

Placing a hand on her hip, Mara blew out pensively. Luke stood motionless below in the middle of the dusty floor. Watching his shoulders, she wondered – how much did he know? Was he listening to her emotions, quietly waiting for her to reach some kind of resolution?

Or was he as lost in his memories of this place as she was?

He turned, and for a moment as he looked at her, there was a flicker of oddness about his eyes, some unspoken question, some unrealised concern. Crossing to where she stood on the raised lip at the edge of the room, he lifted his hand to her… His hand, now: a husband's hand, tender. His hand, then: an enemy's hand, loathed. He waited there in the half-light.

Then Mara laid her fingers on his palm, and he drew her down into his arms.

"How are those demons?" he whispered against her hair.

Mara drew back a little, and smiled. "Non-existent. Remember?"

"Ah." He held her eye a few moments more. His tunic was covered with a light film of dust, Mara saw. He smelled warm: a gentle, clean warmth, not harsh like the desert.

"You learn," she said quietly. "You pick up and move on."

He gazed at her for another moment, and Mara glimpsed something seep in his eyes, something quiet and full, like wonder, or… pride, or perhaps love. She looked at him quizzically, but he only smiled and ran his fingers over her dust-filmed cheek. "I suppose you do, Mara," he said softly. "I suppose you do."

She took his hand. "Let's go."

* * *

"You're really all right?" he asked her later, somewhere in the midst of the desert where they'd made their camp for the night. 

She showed him a look. "I'm fine."

"Yes," he said slowly. They'd found a sheltered area and had lit a small fire to combat the desert chill: its light danced in his eyes as he looked at her. "Yes, but you always say that. You could be dying and you'd say that."

"What would you rather I do?" Mara leaned back against the rock, crossing her arms.

"How about telling me how you actually feel?"

"I feel fine. Really," Mara added at his exasperated look. "I wouldn't bother lying if I didn't. Not unless I wanted to deal with it on my own." She opened her hands in the flickering light. "I refuse to be defined by my past. You learn, you move on. I don't like to think of how close I came to killing you, of course…" Not to mention the many others she _had _killed. Strangely, though, it was always Luke's face that came in the worst of her nightmares, Luke's blood that ran on her fingers until she woke gasping and choking – and it had been that way ever since the very beginning, all the way back on Myrkr, when he'd been little more than an enemy who refused to fit the mold her hate created. "But I can't undo my actions in the past. I can't change who I was then by what I am now. It's just not possible." Mara lowered her hands to her knees. "Forward is the only way I can go. So – I go forward."

"_We_ go forward." Luke shifted to brush her fingers with his own. "I've got a few things back there I'd like to change, given the chance."

"Byss?" some obscure instinct drove Mara to enquire, before she could bite her tongue and the idiotically obvious suggestion back.

A pained expression flicked across Luke's face. "That," he acknowledged. "But I was thinking more along the lines of taking ten years to realise what you meant to me."

"Oh." Mara's face warmed. She'd felt tactless; now she felt truly embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it," Luke murmured.

"Stay out of my head," Mara muttered back by rote. But she couldn't find any heat to inject into the rebuke.

"That's a little difficult…" Luke leaned closer and adjusted the blanket she'd draped around herself, tucking it up around her shoulders. "I'm used to being in there now."

She shook her head at him, but he kissed her soundly before she could find a retort.

* * *

TBC 


	3. Part 3

Note: There are some references to _Tatooine Ghost_ in this section, however they're fairly minor and shouldn't be hard to follow even if you're unfamiliar with the book.

* * *

The journey to Anchorhead took some days, and brought them to the very edges of the Dune Sea. Desert conditions becoming familiar by now, Mara took care to cover her skin from the bite of the suns. She's returned to the comfortable, loose-fitting garb of the locals; it was only practical in the blazing heat. The skirts felt particularly strange.

"I never saw you as a skirt wearer," Luke observed randomly one afternoon.

Mara turned to face him and struck a mock pose, her knee bent and a hand on her hip. She narrowed her eyes. "So what do you think?"

He smiled. "Suits you."

"Ah, but you would say that," Mara observed sagely. "Bias in the judge, I think."

"The judge is very biased," Luke agreed, crossing to slip his hands around her waist. "The competition doesn't stand a chance."

"There's competition?" Mara purred.

Luke only raised an eyebrow in return. "You won by light years, obviously."

"Obviously," Mara echoed. He smiled. Mara allowed a smile of her own to soften her lips; and, tugging him closer, she claimed her prize.

They had almost reached Anchorhead – being less than a day out – when Luke began to slow the landspeeder. "Luke?" Mara queried. She wasn't exactly in the mood for sightseeing. The desert had its merits, to be sure, but civilisation or what passed for it on Tatooine also had its strong points – such as real sanitation, and reprieve from the suns. She was beginning to look forward to reaching Anchorhead.

Luke had a frown on his face. "There's a sandstorm coming, I'm fairly certain," he said. "Moving in fast, from the look of it. I think we'd better find shelter. That ridge we passed a way back should suffice."

Back into the desert, even a little way… "All right." Mara sat back, suppressing a sigh.

Luke flicked a glance at her, then turned the speeder and sped back toward the ridge. They only just made it: the wind was whipping up stinging grains by the time Luke parked the landspeeder in a sheltered overhang.

"There are some caves higher up, I think," he said, raising his voice over the wind. "We'd be safest there."

They began to scramble up the rocky bluff. Luke had surer footing than Mara on the sandy rock; she wasn't sure why. Old instincts, maybe, from his childhood. He turned back a few times to help her over difficult patches; normally Mara would have refused help, but something in his urgency was catching. She was being to grow perplexed: the storm was near, but there was something else bothering him.

"What's the rush?" she asked as he turned to assist her again. Her feet kept getting tangled in the skirts that had seemed so comfortable not long ago – they definitely weren't suited to hiking.

"Tuskens," Luke said tersely as he leaned awkwardly to reach for her hand. "They're common in this area, and I've got a bad—" A shape rose behind him. Mara felt her eyes widen; her hand reflexively ducked toward the blaster at her belt. Unfortunately, it was the hand Luke had been reaching for. He almost overbalanced, half-twisting to face the Tusken behind him—then the staff in Tusken's raised fist crashed across his head and he fell back onto Mara.

Luke wasn't a particularly heavy man, but his full weight wasn't trifling either – especially when Mara was unprepared for it. She stumbled on the uneven ground, slipping awkwardly enough that her ankle twinged. She dropped the blaster trying to brace Luke, failed that, and ended slipping on the loose rocks. Luke, apparently, was unconscious. That staff had come down hard. Was he all right?

Bandaged hands jerked Luke's weight off her before she could find her footing; some kind of dirty fabric was thrust over her head like a hood, and she was jerked onto her feet, hands pulled behind her. The Tuskens moved fast, much faster than she would have expected. She couldn't see, the ground was unreliable, and – where was Luke? No, it was too risky to try anything. If only she hadn't dropped the damned blaster.

They were pulled along somewhere, not gently. Mara was pushed and half-dragged when she stumbled. She tried cursing at them, but she was either ignored or shoved even harder. Not really worth the effort, then; Mara gave up that endeavour. Reaching out into the Force, she was relieved to find Luke was all right. Unconscious, yes, and he would probably have another concussion to add to that impressive tally when he woke – hopefully not too serious a concussion. Mara was jointly anxious and exasperated. How did he _always_ manage to get himself injured?

It felt like they were moving downwards; soon they reached some kind of shelter. From the noise nearby, the sandstorm had hit – and not even Tuskens dared brave those lethal winds.

Mara was shoved against something hard and rocky. She sank to the sandy ground, and there was a dull kind of a thud; Mara winced. The Tuskens moved a little distance away. She'd been listening, both with her ears and with the Force, and while it was always difficult with an unfamiliar species, she judged there to be at least half a dozen of them.

An eerie silence unfolded as the storm intensified, noise suspended whitely on the fury of the winds. Mara crawled through the strange quiet until she found something soft and solid in the sand beside her – Luke, still unconscious. Her hands had been bound behind her, held fast with some kind of rough rope; but she drew her husband close as best she could, and sat by him to wait out the storm.

* * *

Luke woke slowly – not a promising sign – stirring as the Tuskens grunted and snorted somewhere close by. The storm had passed quickly, and the Tuskens had dragged Mara and Luke down somewhere further. Mara guessed they'd returned to the landspeeder, and that the Tuskens were amusing themselves ransacking their supplies. 

She felt Luke move first, and then groan. She held her breath, but the Tuskens didn't seem to halt what they were doing if the continued noise was anything to go by.

"Luke?" she hissed.

"Mrrgh," he replied, or something like it. His sense felt hazy.

"_Luke_,"Mara said. "Are you all right?"

"Ugh… My head. Not so good."

He didn't sound brilliant. Mara had almost had it before he'd woken… She tucked her chin under the edge of the hood again and bent her head forward, twisting her neck. The dark fabric slipped forward. Her hair tumbled over her head, tangled and sweaty.

At least the hood was finally off. She shook her head and blinked at the sudden light. She sat against the foot of the rocky bluff; Luke was just sitting up, his hands bound behind him as hers were, but hoodless.

"Luke?" Mara said again.

"I've been better," he muttered. "But I've been much worse."

Mara frowned. If she had a hand free, she would have touched his shoulder. He looked distinctly unwell. She twisted to glance behind her, where the Tusken Raiders were indeed ransacking their speeder. "Oh, wonderful."

When she turned back, Luke was staring at her. There was an oddness in his eyes that froze her for a moment: something hard and hot and cold at once. "You're bleeding," he said, his tone strangely blank. "They hurt you."

His eyes were on her forehead. The Tuskens had been less than gentle – it was possible she'd sustained a graze there, to go with bruises elsewhere. Nothing too serious, however, and she never liked that look on his face. "Luke," she said in warning.

"They hurt you," he said again, and his eyes went beyond her to the Tuskens. Something in his gaze flared, and he made as if to rise. Mara was faster, coming to her knees.

"I'm _fine_," she said as sharply as possible. "Don't be a fool, Skywalker."

He stared at her, blinked, and looked to the side. After a moment, he looked up, more subdued. "Are you sure?" He ran his gaze over her carefully, checking despite whatever she might say.

"Positive." Mara's voice came out a little shortly. What did he think she was doing, hiding a severed limb? "Are we going to get out of here?"

He blinked again. "Ah – yes." His muscles strained as he tested the rope binding his arms behind him, but his was apparently as strong as hers. "All right." He shifted, turning his back to her so she could see the rope. "You'll have to do this."

"Luke…" If he was thinking of turning this into some kind of Force lesson –

"Mara," he said shortly. "I can't do it. I can't see how it's tied. And concentrating isn't easy at the moment. Can you please just untie me?"

"All right, all right." Mara eyed the ropes dubiously. Fine manipulation was still far from her best area in the Force.

"Just concentrate," Luke said quietly. "You can do this."

Somehow he made the words resound with confidence. She'd seen students of his bloom under that tone, and she had to admit it did offer a solid boost, primarily because she knew that not one iota of that belief was feigned. Mara glanced up at the Tuskens again – "Don't worry about them," Luke muttered. "They're not the least bit interested in us at the moment. Just concentrate," – then she reached out with a tendril of the Force, weaving into the complex binding of the ropes. It took three attempts, but she had the rope off shortly.

"Well done," Luke said. He rubbed his wrists and turned his head, then said, "Uh-oh."

Mara twisted. The Tuskens had had left their rummaging, advancing around the landspeeder with staffs in hand. They moved astonishingly fast for such unwieldy-looking beings – and Mara could feel their aggression now, savage like the desert. They weren't happy Luke had escaped his bonds.

Luke was on his feet in an instant, his hand extended – Mara realised belatedly one of the Tuskens had his lightsaber on its belt – and then the lightsaber was flying through the dusk air, its glow burning a scar through the gathering shadows. It landed in Luke's right hand, extended high; Luke spread the other hand in counter measure, his feet apart at ready stance. For an instant he stood in silhouette against the dying suns, a dark shape with a blade of living fire raised high. A night wind blew from behind him, cool and bleak, swirling sand toward the bandage-swathed Tuskens. It carried a faint sound from the depths of the desert, a whisper of empty valleys and ancient dunes and endless stars, thrumming and hollow. Mara shivered.

The desert dwellers stopped in their tracks. One of them grunted something, oddly frantic, in their guttural language; and then abruptly, they dropped the supplies they held and dispersed as though a krayt dragon were on their tail, vanishing into the landscape.

Luke didn't lower the lightsaber straight away. When he did, there was an air of bafflement around his sense. Mara rose from crouching position; she placed her weight awkwardly as she stood, and the ankle she'd strained before almost buckled. Luke caught her arm and pulled her close, and, absently, she let him. Whether he was in fact offering or seeking support was probably a debatable point, anyway.

"What was that?" she murmured, staring after the Tuskens.

"I… don't know." Luke still sounded perplexed as he clipped his saber to his belt. "I've never seen them do that before."

"More's the luck for us, I suppose," Mara muttered. "What was said before they ran?"

Luke frowned. "Something about 'ghost'."

"Ghost?"

"I think so. I'm not sure."

"Hm." Mara frowned into the desert depths for a moment, then looked toward the landspeeder. "We'd better salvage what we can and get out of here."

"I suppose so." Luke didn't sound enthusiastic.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right."

"I should look at that head wound."

"Later. We need to get into Anchorhead tonight if we can, with supplies so low. They've slashed our water rations. We won't survive without those during daylight."

For someone who accused _her_ of reticence when it came to injuries, he was damnably stubborn. Mara bit her tongue though, and followed him across to the speeder, careful of her tender ankle. The pragmatism in his words was undeniable, and she supposed she couldn't force him to submit to ministrations if he was going to dig in his heels.

But he stopped halfway to the speeder. "Luke?" Mara said suspiciously.

"I'm fine," he muttered, and took two more steps, rather unsteadily. Then he halted again, turned, bent over, and emptied his stomach onto the sand.

"Fine," Mara muttered scornfully, stepping close and placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Urgh," he said, leaning against her.

"Uh huh," Mara agreed. "You're a real idiot sometimes, have I ever told you that?"

"I think you've mentioned it once or twice."

"Playing the damned hero all the damned time… Sit," she ordered, as they reached the landspeeder. Wonder of wonders, he complied without a word. He was now a vaguely grey-greenish colour. Mara bent over the wound at the back of his head. Gritty sand had stuck to the blood; it was very difficult in the fading light to tell how deep it was. "Idiot," she muttered again, and her voice was a little sharper, a little more unsteady than she liked.

Luke reached up, caught her hand, and drew her down to eye level with him. His eyes were darkish in the dim light, shadowed faintly with puzzlement and concern. "Mara," he said carefully, "I'm all right. Really. It's just a concussion, not even a major one. I've had them before. Are _you_ okay?"

She snatched her hand away and straightened. "I'm wonderful," she said sourly. "Just wonderful. Don't do that again, all right?"

"I'm sorry," he said, a little lamely. She could feel his confusion. Little wonder – he was injured, and she was railing at him for it? _Pull it together,_ she told herself tightly. She knew better than this.

So he had a concussion and they were in the middle of the desert without supplies. So it was her fault he'd been injured in the first place. So she'd been frightened, frightened badly, frightened almost to death when he fell. So for an instant her entire universe had shrunk to that one moment. So she hated being afraid, _hated_ it, and somehow he had the power to make her afraid like no one else—

Mara put her hands on her hips, balled into fists, and sighed. Luke gently took her left hand, brought it close, prised it open, and kissed her dusty palm. "I love you," he said.

Mara met his eyes. She wasn't sure how much of her thoughts he was picking up; she could feel that he was a little fuzzy, and probably sore besides. Obviously he was picking up enough to think she needed reassurance. Or he just thought she was angry with him and couldn't puzzle out why… "Thank you," she said. She touched his cheek gently, then said – ordered – "Healing trance."

But he shook his head. "I need to be awake."

"Luke," Mara said, and her voice was edged.

He frowned – with a little more irritation than he usually would. "We need to get into Anchorhead before sunrise. Do you know the way, Mara?"

"Oh." She hadn't thought of that. "Well, just sit back then. Try to rest."

"Aye, captain," he muttered as he leaned back. Mara pretended not to hear. If he wanted to be petulant, she wasn't going to bother arguing with him.

They set off. The suns had set completely by this point, and bright stars were winking into being against the sky. The temperature began to plummet almost instantly.

Luke directed her as to the bearing she needed to take, then sank down low in the seat. The wind buffeted them as Mara drove, whistling and cold and smelling of night. Her hair was tugged out of its braid; it would be impossibly tangled, but Mara was beyond caring.

She glanced at Luke after a while. His eyes were half-closed, but Mara knew that he wasn't asleep: she could feel him fighting drowsiness. The wind was tugging at his tunic and ruffling his hair, providing a tousled look that was not unappealing.

He shifted his head slightly, glancing at her from the edge of his eye. Mara tamped a smile and returned her attention to piloting.

A few hours passed in silence as shadowed sand whipped past. Mara had thought Luke had nodded off long ago when he suddenly spoke, breaking the heavy quiet of the desert night and startling her. "I wonder if they were referring to my father," he said.

"What?"

"Those Tuskens. Leia told me once… I don't know, some old story from years ago when she came with Han. There's a site that people say the Tuskens believe is haunted, somewhere out on the edge of the Wastes. A whole camp of Sand People was slaughtered there years ago. Leia said that it was our father. That his mother was killed by them when he was a teenager and he destroyed the camp in retaliation." Luke paused for what seemed a long time. "Maybe they saw my lightsaber and associated it with that."

"Could be," Mara said cautiously. She hadn't heard that story before. It sounded like Vader. Though of course, he hadn't been Vader then. He'd been Anakin Skywalker, a brash young Jedi learner. Whose mother was brutally killed… who retaliated with pain-filled fury, fury that spiralled beyond his control into realms of fire and destruction.

Slightly disturbing was the resemblance she saw in someone she knew very well, someone who possessed a similar capacity to give himself to a level of anger that could drown a man when threatened with harm to a person he loved. Rarely did he allow it leeway – or perhaps more accurately, rarely did it slip past his control – but Luke surely had a temper to match her own at its fiercest. It was not easily provoked, but it was there. Mara had seen it perhaps more clearly than any other person. As often directed_ at_ her as on her behalf, perhaps, but then she'd always been more than willing to return the compliment.

"Maybe," Luke said again, softly, staring off across the desert. She wondered if the same thoughts were occurring to him, or if he was thinking about his father again. Either way, he would no doubt prefer privacy. Mara returned her attention to the desert ahead.

"What do you think about children?" Luke said some time later, again startling her. She'd been lost in her own thoughts, lulled by the featureless dark of the desert.

"Haven't we talked about this already?" she asked warily. She was sure they had, in fact; they'd discussed it before they were married. "I'm not opposed for some point in the future, but I'm not desperately yearning at the moment."

"Yes," Luke said, and fell silent.

"Are you?" Mara prompted, after the silence stretched.

"Am I what?" He glanced at her, startled.

"Desperately yearning."

"Oh. No… no."

"Are you sure?"

"Ah – yes. I'm certain."

Mara glanced at him, puzzled. She'd never quite understood him when it came to this particular issue; she'd always thought him the family type. For that reason, she'd wanted to make it clear before they married that she didn't want children straight away. She'd been very surprised when he agreed without argument, or even really discussion.

"Something you've been thinking about?" she asked.

But he shook his head. "Not as such. Not the way you're thinking, at least."

"How, then?"

Luke sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "Well… It's hard to explain."

Mara lifted her eyebrows. He slowly continued. "It's true that parenthood has always been something of an issue in my life, but I'm not sure…" Leaning forward, he staring through the faded windscreen, not looking at her. "When I was younger, it was something I wanted badly. Then I got older and realised that was a reaction, really. That I'd wanted a relationship with my own father so long, and never fulfilled the wish. It's not fair to put that on a child. You can't expect a child to be a replacement, or a bacta-patch to fill a hole inside of you. That's not a reason to bring a life into the galaxy."

"Then Byss happened." Luke frowned at nothing. "Things changed after that. With Callista… I wanted children, but she wouldn't agree. I wanted to marry her, but she wouldn't agree. That wish was a reaction, too, though, I think – I knew on some level that she was going, even while she was there beside me, and I wanted to stop her. Besides… it wasn't a great period in my life. I think there was a lot of uncertainty that I hoped being a parent might eliminate. Somehow I wanted to prove I could be a better father than mine had been, just as I was trying so hard to prove I was a better Jedi. Trying to recover lost ground, and in the end just losing more."

He glanced at her, looking for who knew what. Maybe he found it, because he leaned back and went on. "After Callista left, things changed again. I began to doubt I could ever keep someone around long enough to have a child with, for starters—" he showed her a sliver of a smile that was more pain than it was irony, and Mara's heart bent for him – "and I began to think about all the things that could go wrong. I didn't trust myself as much as I did once. Raising a child is a vast responsibility in itself, and a Force-sensitive child – well, that doubles the risk factor right there. Would I be up to that? What if it ended up like myself and my father all over again? Am I capable of that? Do I deserve the responsibility? Do I _want_ it? I wasn't sure anymore."

"And now?"

He looked at her. "I don't know," he said. "Things have changed again."

"I see." That did fill the blanks. Some of it, Mara had suspected or inferred on her own, but… he really doubted his ability to be a parent? She would never have guessed that, not in a thousand years. He was so natural with children.

"I suppose I should have told you all this before," Luke said. "It's just – I didn't know what to say. I do want to us to have a child someday, Mara. But it's not a burning need at the moment, as you said. I think we'll know when the time comes."

_If it does, _Mara heard unspoken in his voice. She had a feeling that things would change as they grew together into their marriage through the years ahead… but she found herself relieved to know there wasn't resentment somewhere under that composed front, that he in fact understood her reservations and was more than willing to wait.

She held her hand out, and he took her fingers gently. They exchanged a glance. "I'd say we'll be occupied enough for a while, working out this marriage thing," Mara said.

Luke smiled. "Oh yes," he agreed. "I remember Han and Leia's first year."

"Should I be worried?" Mara raised her eyebrows.

"We'll be fine," he told her. "I'm certain we'll be fine."

Mara watched the desert span before them under endless stars, and glimpsed again the shadows of their future, embossed in vision against the darkness. Pain and suffering, conflict and fury, warmth burning fiercely against the night – it wouldn't be easy, that much had always been clear. But the most valuable things were always those that had to be fought for and earned. "I think you may be right," she said.

Luke squeezed her hand, and they sped on.

* * *

They arrived in Anchorhead long hours before the suns rose: the sky was still dark, stars shining brightly above the silver sand. Anchorhead was much smaller than Mos Eisley, and noticeably different in terms of layout and architecture. While related, Anchorhead's design seemed more authentic, somehow truer and older. 

Luke was dozing; Mara prodded his shoulder gently as they neared the town, and he awoke with a start. "Made it," she said.

"You should have woken me sooner…" he mumbled blearily.

"I found it perfectly easily on my own," she pointed out. "You should have gone into that healing trance."

"Mph. I'm all right." He rubbed his face, then winced and touched the back of his head. Mara had covered the cut with a makeshift bandage which seemed to be holding up relatively well, but proper first aid supplies would be better.

"Bantha-brained stubborn," Mara muttered, not quite under her breath. Luke glanced at her from the edge of his eye, but otherwise ignored the remark.

There was a large, squat building to one side as Mara piloted the landspeeder in, a building offset by a few smaller outbuildings. "That's the power station," Luke said with a sigh. "I suppose we should head there first."

"For…?"

"Supplies. Directions. That kind of thing."

"All right," Mara turned the speeder that way. Luke sounded unenthusiastic, but that could just have been the concussion coupled with tiredness.

"Brings back memories," Luke said, half to himself, as they got out of the speeder.

"Hm?"

He glanced at her. "This was where anyone under the age of twenty-five would go when bored – which, basically, was always. We'd do – well. Not much." He smiled ruefully. "In hindsight, my uncle had a point when he used to rant about me wasting my time here."

"I see." Mara slipped her arm through his. Her ankle was twinging again after so long being immobile. Thank the Force for solid boots. She imagined they looked quite a picture – Luke with a bandage on the back of his head, she tangled and dishevelled.

Inside the building was cluttered, but well-lit; evidently here, like in Mos Eisley, the day started early, before the suns rose and the heat struck.

There was a rusted bell on the wall that Luke tapped. His sense was odd – there was definite reluctance there now, Mara thought.

A man emerged from the back. He was a portly man, older than Luke, with a cap of curls that had probably been dark once but had gone to grey. He was wiping his hands on a scrap of oily cloth as he walked. "Can I help…" he began, then his eyes fell on Luke and he stopped. His air of enterprise fell to a sudden, sharp caution. "Skywalker."

"Fixer," Luke said, a wariness of his own rising over his sense. Mara shifted. She was baffled by the sudden tension, but was alert to danger. She lowered her hand discreetly toward the spare blaster she'd retrieved from the speeder, now hidden under her belt, and eased back from Luke to provide better clearance.

There was a silence. Then the man discarded his cloth. His eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Luke's eyes narrowed in return. Mara felt his anger spark and felt him just as quickly smother it, an almost involuntary reflex. It remained closer to the surface than it had been, however. He _was_ tired, she thought; normally he would have a much easier time with his temper. "We're passing through," he said. "Tuskens attacked us and we lost our supplies."

"That's not what I mean," the man said, striding forward. As he drew closer, Mara saw that he wasn't as far from Luke in age as she'd initially thought, perhaps only a few years older – the suns had added years to his face that were misleading. He prodded Luke in the chest, hard. Luke stepped back. "What are you doing on Tatooine? Come back to flaunt your life under our noses, have you? Come to show us all little Wormie's got that we don't have? How much _better_ you are?" The man turned his sneer onto Mara. "Parading the trophy woman they've given you."

Luke's sense flared. In a flash, he'd pushed the other man back, not gently, and advanced. "Tatooine is my homeworld as much as it is yours," he said. "I haven't come to flaunt anything. And you owe my _wife_ an apology."

"Always were the feisty one, weren't you, Wormie?" A woman's voice broke in, silky, but cold underneath. Mara turned. The woman in the doorway wore a light robe that didn't leave a great deal to the imagination, and her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. She was striking, but in an almost clinical way. Her eyes were bitter.

"Camie," Luke said.

The woman smiled as she walked forward. "Hello, Luke." She flicked a glance at Mara, dark and disdainful as she took in the state of her clothes.

Mara found her fingers curling around the shape of the blaster tucked beneath her belt. Luke glanced at her, and she lifted her eyebrows. He turned back to the man. "We'll find our supplies elsewhere," he said.

"Good luck," the man called after them as they turned. "It's been a slow season, Skywalker. You won't find excess supplies anywhere else."

"That went well," Mara observed as they returned to the speeder.

Luke muttered a curse in Huttese. His sense was still threaded with veins of anger. "He always was a bully," he said sourly. "Some people never change."

"So where to?" Mara asked as they reached the speeder. She let him take the driving seat – he knew the town, and she didn't.

"I have no idea," Luke said dully. "Maybe—"

"Oh, and Wormie…" The woman followed them out. Luke's mood grew darker. The woman leaned over the side of the vehicle, close to Luke – the pre-dawn winds tugged at her loose robe, making it flutter. Mara looked at her with contempt, and the woman met her gaze and flashed a hard, cold smile, bleaker than the desert. "Jula and Silya Darklighter live on the outskirts of town now," she said to Luke. "Maybe they can help you."

Luke looked at her suspiciously, but said, "Thank you."

The woman smiled, and leaned closer. "Pretty wife," she hissed. "You should tell her about all the good times we had together." She flicked her fingers across his cheek, then straightened and walked away.

Luke swore again, under his breath, and muttered, "The only good times were when she was making fun of me in front of the others. And I didn't find them at all enjoyable."

"Those were your friends, growing up?" Mara remarked, once they were underway. "No wonder you hated it here."

He glanced at her, an odd glance. "Camie and Fixer could be cruel," he said. "But not out of any special maliciousness. They were just bored. This… is different." He was silent a moment, then said, "I came back here during the war for a mission, trying to recruit pilots from among the local farmers. Fixer and Camie alerted the Imps in the area. Fixer's conscience got to him in the end and he told me in time for me to get away, but the damage was done. They both come from farming stock originally, and… you just don't do that kind of thing to someone, especially a friend. Maybe hating me has made it easier for them to justify what they'd done. I don't know."

"Hm." Mara decided to leave that line of discussion; Luke was more dismayed than he let on, judging by his emotions. Hurt, she thought. "So who are Jula and Silya, and why do we need to see them?"

"Oh. You know Gavin Darklighter? They're his parents. They owned my aunt and uncle's farm for a while. I'm not sure if they still do – that was some time ago now."

"And they'll give us supplies?"

"They might. Or they'll be able to tell us where we can go."

"Good."

* * *

"Anchorhead's the oldest settlement on Tatooine, you know," Luke commented as they drove through the still town. "It's the only city left that was settled in the original wave of colonisers, over four thousand years ago. When they left, it was abandoned, but the second wave repopulated it a few hundred years ago." 

Mara made a polite noise, and Luke flicked a glance at her. "Well, _I _found it interesting."

"It's fascinating," Mara replied. "Dear."

His look turned very dry, and she smiled.

The house they at last came to was large by Tatooine standards, indeed on the outskirts, and, from appearances, mostly set underground. Luke crossed to the domed doorway – but it opened before he could raise his hand to the small chime. "Luke?" exclaimed the silver-haired woman who stood there. She had dark eyes, which widened with alarm. "Luke Skywalker! Is everything all right? Is Gavin…?"

"Yes, fine," Luke reassured her. "I'm just passing through the area."

"Oh, I'm glad. You gave me a fright. Jumping to conclusions, I'm afraid."

"That's understandable," Luke said. "Silya, this is my wife, Mara."

"Oh, yes! We saw your wedding on the HoloNet. Such a beautiful ceremony." The woman smiled at Mara. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you," Mara said, a tad uncertainly.

"Come inside," the woman said, standing aside. Luke ducked through with murmured thanks, and Mara followed. The hall was cool and spacious, shadowed in the darkness before dawn.

"Shame on that terrible man who interrupted the ceremony," Silya Darklighter continued. "But you did handle him beautifully, Luke. I said to Jula, see – that's the little boy who used to trail around after Biggs, a Jedi Master now, so wise…"

Mara looked at Luke, amused, but it was too dark to tell if he was blushing. She suspected he was. "He just wanted someone to listen to him," Luke said. "Most people do."

"Yes, you always were good at that – I suppose your aunt Beru taught you so. She was a wonderful listener." The woman turned to smile at Luke. "I see so much of them in you. They would be proud of what you've become."

Luke's expression was unreadable in the gloom. "Thank you," he murmured. Mara felt a strange sliver of emotion in him, sharp but old – like pain and warmth in one.

Silya led them into a sitting room. Her husband joined them. He was built with the solidness of decades of physical labour, and wore the practical clothes of a farmer. He greeted Luke warmly, shook hands with Mara, and listened attentively as they explained their encounter with the Tuskens. "Very strange," he said at the end, shaking his head. "I've never heard anything like it. But you're welcome to use what you need, and purchase supplies if you need them."

"You must be exhausted," Silya pitched in. "We have spare rooms. You must stay and get some sleep before you continue. You are continuing, are you?"

"Yes," Luke said. "I was thinking of stopping by the farm, if that's…" He trailed off as the Darklighters exchanged a glance. "Is that a problem?"

"Not a problem, Luke," Jula said carefully. "Of course you're always welcome there. It was your home. We could hardly prevent you from visiting."

"It's just that no one lives there anymore," Silya added gently. "That area is becoming drier, with more sandstorms. The Tuskens are moving in. It's too remote, too dangerous."

"You've sold it, then," Luke said, his tone inscrutable.

"Oh, no." Silya leaned forward, putting a hand on his arm. "We couldn't do that. We had to let it go, though. Maintaining it was too much. Jula checks on the grave markers you had installed, but the house… I'm sorry."

"No, I understand." Luke rubbed his forehead. "I could hardly blame you if you had sold it, but I'm glad you haven't. I'd hate to see it turned into some kind of sightseeing spectacle."

Silya patted his arm. "You're welcome."

The older woman made them eat a hot meal – though Luke only ate a marginal amount; Mara suspected he was still a little nauseous – and clean up, for which Mara was most grateful, and then ushered them into a section of the building that was even older than the rest. "This house is far too big for us," Silya said, shaking her head as she led them down a long hallway. "At least it's not out in the desert. Jula's health isn't what it was, these days— you two can sleep down here. You look like you could use a rest."

Luke smiled. "Thank you." The woman bustled off, leaving them alone.

Luke sat heavily on the room's bed. "Healing trance?" Mara suggested. She was careful not to phrase it as an order, this time, because she could feel how tired he was; and a tired Luke was far more likely to snap back, which at the moment wasn't really worth the effort.

He shook his head. "I don't need it. It'll pass on its own."

"I think I'll take a proper look, if it's all the same to you." Mara reached for the medkit Silya had left.

The wound wasn't all that deep, once cleaned, and Mara dressed it quickly and competently. "There," she said, standing back.

"Mm," Luke said. "What about you?"

"What about me?" Mara placed a hand on her hip.

Luke stood, put his hands on her shoulders, and applied gentle pressure, forcing her to sit on the bed. He crouched before her. "What about this?" he murmured, placing a finger on the cut on her forehead. "And this." He touched her stomach, over a bruise. "And this." He lifted her foot into his lap, lastly, and brushed his fingers over her ankle.

"A few scratches and a sprain at worst?" Mara shook her head. "I think I'll live." Luke was easing her foot from its boot, stroking his fingers over the skin of her ankle. The dull ache immediately eased. Her skin tingled, sending shivers right up her spine.

Luke lowered her ankle gently and raised his finger to the cut on her forehead, his touch feather-light. The skin there prickled not unpleasantly. She felt the Force swirl to embrace her, trailing strands of healing gold. Luke's fingers slipped to a graze on her neck.

"Oh no," Mara said, realising what he was doing. "You wouldn't go into a damned healing trance, and you expect me to let you use the Force to heal a few—" She broke off abruptly as Luke leaned and placed a lingering kiss to her forehead where the cut had been, his hand slipping beneath her tunic to a bruise on her back, fingers brushing the skin tenderly. His lips moved to her throat, finding the place the graze had been.

"Uh, Luke…" Mara managed as he eased her backwards, his hands tracing on over her bruises, "Not to complain, but I thought you were tired."

"I'm exhausted," he breathed.

"Then maybe—" His lips found hers.

Some time later, he whispered in her ear, "Maybe what?"

"Maybe nothing," Mara sighed, and Luke laughed and drew her closer yet.

They fell asleep tangled together, and Mara slept soundly and safely.

* * *


	4. Part 4

They didn't linger long in Anchorhead. It took a day to regather supplies, between the Darklighters' admittedly exhaustive stores and those of local traders. Mara let Luke handle it, trusting to his knowledge of the area and their needs.

It was strange to do that, she found: leaving arrangements in the hands of someone else. But then her years in Karrde's organisation had taught her the value of delegating work. Perhaps she'd never been particularly good at doing so; and perhaps it was different in areas that related more directly to her own wellbeing, where she'd always insisted on absolute autonomy, but this was a major feature of the change in her life and something she would just have to get used to.

Luke, more than anyone, had shown her just how her drive for independence in the last ten years had limited her, restricting progress rather than fostering it. She'd never known how lonely she'd become until he'd prised through her defences there in the caves – or maybe she'd prised through his, she wasn't entirely certain – and their relationship had taken its gradual turn into realms unknown.

It wasn't until she had laid in his hands her complete being, open and exposed and utterly shieldless, and accepted from him the same, that she realised how _good_ such a thing felt. How much she'd wanted it without ever suspecting – allowing herself to suspect – so.

She took a walk around Anchorhead while Luke chased up supplies. It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening, the second sun creeping to join its twin below the horizon. The shadows of the houses were long, looming over narrow, dusty streets. Children darted through the gloom, dressed in worn clothes, while mothers in colour-leached dresses called after them. Visiting moisture farmers from the fringes of the wastes treaded past in their faded desertwear.

They lived hard lives, these people. The challenges they faced day in and day out were multitude; and they weren't do-or-die challenges of the like Mara was accustomed to facing. These trials stretched over decades and lifetimes. With nothing more to look to than a future for their children little brighter than their own, these people lived and worked and endured… Mara found herself wondering if she could survive that life.

What if Luke had never left here? What if the Jawa transport had missed the two droids wandering in the desert? What if it had visited another moisture farm before the Larses, and sold the astromech there? What if the curious farmboy had never removed the restraining bolt from the odd little droid, what if the stormtroopers had failed to track the droids and never found the farm, what if the princess never sent her tin messengers to the ancient general in the first place? A thousand what-ifs – it could have happened so easily. And Luke would have lived out his days on this wasteland… perhaps taking over his uncle's farm, struggling the endless and gloriously futile battle against the cruelty of the sands until the day he died, dreaming of distant stars and lost splendour until the last breath left him.

It would have killed him early in itself, Mara thought, to have been locked here, chained to the unforgiving dirt. Or perhaps she misjudged him. Perhaps he would have lived to an old age, plumbing the sand for moisture day in and day out, and never suspected his potential for greatness – not fame, which was far less important, but courage of heart and spirit.

Why was it that seemed worse?

And what about her? If she'd been born in this place, if she'd been raised here, the child of some semi-prosperous moisture farmer away on the outskirts somewhere. Her childhood spent running and playing in the dust and sand, full of heat and isolation and boredom, of harsh land and harsher struggles. Marrying, perhaps, the charge of a nearby farmer on the eve of adulthood – a young man with fair hair, even, little more than a boy, with eyes the colour of the sky and hands that danced in the darkness; kind and warm, a little immature, dismissed as a dreamer by his guardians and the townsfolk alike but with ambitions that he whispered for her ears alone, of stars and soaring and worlds far beyond the flat horizons of their planet. Perhaps they could even plan together to escape, one day, when there was money enough. When he was needed less on the farm. After the baby came… When the baby grew… After the next baby … And the dreams would die, slowly, unmourned except in everyday moments. And would love die, also? Or would small joys be enough to counter the slow death of dreams?

It was a sobering thought, and Mara wondered why it resounded so strongly. Adulthood invariably meant the surrendering of dreams; she'd lost many of hers, shred by shred over the years. The valued Hand had been lost to the driven avenger; the avenger had been lost to the businesswoman, who'd been lost to… what? Lover and wife, aide and companion, Jedi Knight? They all fit, in different ways.

She'd lost dreams but discovered others to replace them, retaining fragments along the way. They were more fluid things than most thought…

Still, Mara was uncertain of whether she could survive life here, where existence was so simple and so harsh, and each day was a battle against the elements. It took a certain kind of courage, a special breed of strength – a dogged, stoic type that refused to be cowed.

She saw that strength in Luke, come to think of it. It was that strength that drove him where others would have failed – where others _had_ failed, clearly and completely. It drove him to believe in a father where a monster clearly stood – it drove him to confront an emperor for the soul of a fallen man – it drove him to risk his life, again and again, surrendering so much for the greater good because he felt that someone ought to.

It was even that strength, perhaps, that drove him to trust a woman as she held a blaster to his throat and swore her hatred aloud.

No one, after all, had ever said that brave was the same as sensible…

Mara smiled, and headed back to the Darklighters.

* * *

Mara had strange dreams that night, perhaps sparked by her musings on lives unlived. In a grey dream that glistened with bleakness, she was Hand still, in a place where no son's love had saved a father and changed the galaxy. Luke was dead in this world, she was certain, though there was nothing to clearly indicate so. There was only the fathomless conviction of dreams, and an understanding that somehow it was impossible for the universe to be so utterly grey with him still in it.

It was a dream she knew, for she'd had it many nights before, back in the days when her life had consisted solely of vengeance. In it, she was once again Hand to her emperor, her position restored exactly as it had been in the glory days of the Empire. She had a purpose, a role she was proud of, and respect and esteem that she had earned.

It had been a number of years since Mara last had the dream, and she found that the dream had changed – or perhaps it was she who had changed. The greyness was there, now, and it was pervasive, creeping to wrap around her heart. Her once-great purpose brought hollowness rather than pride, and the respect was poorly-hidden mockery. The emptiness made her ache.

In the second dream, she had heeded the command Palpatine had planted in her and killed Luke rather than a clone imitation. He smiled at her as he lay bleeding, and held up a gore-slicked hand. "It's all right, Mara," he told her quietly, and then died.

Mara's own hands were a brilliant red as she looked down at them, her fingers stained with his life. And her own as well: there wasn't any distinction that she could see. She'd been dying since her master died, and she needed Luke Skywalker to free herself to live.

But she'd killed him, hadn't she. She'd killed him.

Killed.

Him.

_KILLED—_

The greyness swam and choked her.

When Mara woke, it was close to morning. Luke was asleep beside her, his face buried in the pillows. She'd pulled away from his embrace in her sleep, as she was wont to do, and he'd shifted after her, tangling the sheets around them both in the process.

Sighing, Mara disentangled herself and sat up, running her fingers through her tousled hair to little effect. She rose, feeling around in the half-light for her clothes.

When she turned back, Luke was awake, though sleepy-eyed, pushing himself up in the tangled sheets. "Bad dream?" he mumbled.

Mara eyed him. "Maybe."

He ran a hand through his hair – it was getting long, longer than she'd seen him wear for some time, and kept slipping forward over his eyes – and made a sound that could have meant anything.

Mara felt him watching her as she continued to dress. The feeling was strange: unfamiliar, a little uncomfortable, and yet not unpleasant. There was a certain warmth in his sense that was gratifying; a faint, tingling glow that told her he appreciated looking. It was not entirely alien, either, because she'd felt it from him even before their bonding in the caves on Nirauan – though previously it had generally been followed by a hot glimmer of embarrassment and a sudden blankness.

Sometimes she slowed deliberately, enjoying her ability to tweak that steady composure. Now, she just flicked a glance from the edge of her eye. A hint of a smile appeared on his lips; he rubbed his cheek. Then he asked, "What did you dream about?"

Mara tugged her tunic straight and admitted, "You."

"Ah." He mulled a moment, then tentatively inquired, "Bad?"

"In this context, yes." Mara half turned away, her shoulders lowering. "I don't want to talk about it."

"All right." She couldn't control a wince at those words, and almost flinched away when he moved up behind her, putting his hands on her arms. "Mara?"

"I'm fine," she said, stepping away. "Just – I'm fine."

He frowned, standing there half-naked in long loose pants, his hair untidy. "Okay," he said doubtfully. "Well, uh – we should be able to head out today, I think. I've found replacements for the supplies the Tuskens destroyed."

Mara walked around the room, crossing her arms. "Good," she said.

Luke sat on the bed. He was watching her, somewhat blankly. "Yes."

"How's your head feeling?" Mara turned to him.

He half-smiled. "I've got a slight headache, but otherwise I'm fine. I told you I didn't need a healing trance."

Mara shook her head. "I still say you could have used one."

"Weren't you the one lecturing me on overuse of the Force?"

"For trivial things," Mara reminded him. "Concussion isn't trivial."

He grimaced and waved that off as a technicality. "Whatever. I'm fine."

"Mm." Mara had returned to the bed. She sat, and he put an arm around her. She didn't lean into the embrace, but she didn't pull away this time.

"Are you sure that _you _are?" he asked.

"Of course," she said stiffly. "It was just a dream."

She didn't think he bought her denial, however, and her suspicion was all but confirmed as he gently ran his palm down her spine. "I know," he said quietly.

Oddly enough, she thought he truly did.

* * *

They left Anchorhead an hour later, Luke bidding goodbye to the Darklighters and receiving a bundle of packages to pass on to Gavin Darklighter and his wife and children back on Coruscant. The Darklighters refused any other payment.

"They seem to know you fairly well," Mara commented as they drove out of the township. "I didn't think you were that close to Darklighter." She'd only met the Rogue Squadron pilot a few times – a shortish man, she recalled, with dark hair and a neat beard. Quite a lot of his father in him, now she thought of it.

"I don't know Gavin as well as the original members of the squadron," Luke said. "He's Biggs' cousin, so we met a few times as children. He was a lot younger than Biggs and I, though." He glanced at her. "Jula's about as different from his brother as they come. Huff – Biggs' father – made his money exploiting other farmers. He and Biggs never got on, but Biggs' death hit him hard. He never really recovered, from what I heard. I think he died a few years ago."

Luke shook his head, staring out through the windshield. "Hard to believe it's almost twenty years since Biggs died," he murmured to himself. "Doesn't seem that long."

"I suppose being here brings it home," Mara remarked, following his gaze through to the dusty streets Luke had spent his adolescence traipsing.

"Yes," Luke agreed. "It does. And the peace with the Empire… makes you think of all those who never made it this far." He glanced at her, and flashed an odd smile – faint, and sad. "The worst thing is that there are far too many to remember them all. You just remember the ones you knew, and even that fades with time. There were so many of them…" He looked out at the street again. They were nearing the outskirts now, and the houses were far apart and empty. "When I was in command of Rogue Squadron, I knew the name of every pilot who'd died under me. Some were there such a short time that I didn't know their name before they died – but I made sure I learned it. Seemed the least I could do. And it wasn't much."

Mara looked out the side of the speeder as the town dropped away. The vehicle sped up, and the wind began to rip through her hair. She drummed her fingers on the cracked plas-shield of the armrest. The war, for her, meant names as well – but names of those she'd killed, not ones who'd been killed beside her. She would never forget her list of names. It was the very least she could do; and she agreed, it wasn't much. It wasn't much at all.

Luke took a detour to the labyrinthine Beggar's Canyon where he'd raced his friends as a bored teen. Mara could immediately see how it had formed such an apt basis for a career in the fighter ranks: only someone with a pilot's innate instincts or the Force – both, perhaps? – could navigate those twists at high speed. Forget the war years; it was a wonder Luke had survived adolescence.

"Good to know you've retained that cautious nature," Mara remarked sarcastically, staring up at a turn so sharp it must have been almost ninety degrees. "Think of where you might be otherwise."

Standing beside her, Luke smirked. "I can see you taking this course."

"Suggesting a match, Skywalker?"

"I'm not that stupid." Luke held up his hands. "Besides, a couple of old people like us would be out of our element."

Mara snorted. "Speak for yourself."

His lips twitched, but he wisely refrained from comment.

They spent a couple of hours during the hottest part of the day in the canyon, waiting for the heat to siphon off as the suns sank lower. Luke led the way to a deep cave – "Used to be a krayt dragon's home, years ago,"– that he knew of from hours spent exploring the area in his youth, and they sat in the cool to wait out the suns.

"I'm surprised your aunt let you come here to race," Mara commented. "She must have trusted you."

"Uh – not really," Luke said, somewhat sheepishly. "I never told her about the racing. She would have had a fit. Uncle Owen suspected, I think."

"I can understand why you didn't. It must have been incredibly dangerous."

"There were a few crashes, some pretty nasty. We never really considered that someone might get hurt or worse – you always think you're immortal, I think, when you're young."

"I wouldn't know," Mara murmured. She'd seen enough people die by adolescence that death had held no enigma to her – she knew exactly how quickly and ingloriously it could come. She knew exactly the best ways to _make_ it come, for a dozen or more species.

Luke's fingers brushed her shoulder lightly – his left hand, again. Mara bent her head and let him stroke the back of her neck, his fingers light and warm. He didn't say anything, and she appreciated it. There really wasn't anything to say.

"This has been an odd honeymoon," Luke observed softly. "A tour of Tatooine by speeder, with a Tusken attack thrown in for novelty…"

"A sunburn or two…" Mara added.

"Two crashed ships, a reservoir and a shady cantina…"

Mara smiled and leaned her head back. After a few moments, Luke said, his voice suddenly hesitant, "Have you enjoyed it?"

Mara blinked and turned her head. He was looking at her, his eyes pale-blue and filled with something that always set her back – that deep uncertainty, the intense desire to please her. Just like –

"_I still have some lingering doubts about why you'd want to marry me. I mean, I know why I love you and want to marry you. It's just that it doesn't seem like you'll be gaining as much from this as I will…"_

As though he was so wholly unappealing there was no conceivable reason she would want to marry him. And he'd been deadly serious.

As he was now. How could someone be so wise be so utterly _dense_? "We're an odd kind of couple, I suppose," Mara told him, with the edge of a smirk in her smile. "Personally, I couldn't stand anything else. So this honeymoon has been perfect."

He smiled back and brushed his fingers over her cheek, but his eyes questioned, _Really? _She didn't think he entirely believed her. She wasn't sure, in fact, that he'd believed her answer to his other question.

Possibly it hadn't been as reassuring as she'd intended, in truth, but it had been the best she could come up with at the time. The emotional aspect of most relationships had never been her strong point; for a long time they'd escaped her completely – or perhaps it had been she who'd done the escaping. That was something she hoped to remedy, and there was no one in the galaxy she would rather learn from than Luke Skywalker.

In truth, she was still a little perplexed about the honeymoon. It had been nothing like she expected. She wasn't sure what that had been, but this wasn't it. She wasn't about to tell Luke that, though: she smiled at him, saying nothing, and he smiled back.

* * *

They finally arrived at the Lars farm as the suns were setting against the purpling sky. The wind was blowing again, hard and cool, tugging at their clothes and twisting through Mara's hair. The farm sat in semidarkness, small and isolated against the backdrop of vast endless desert and sinking suns.

Luke set the speeder down gently on the edge of the homestead. He turned off the engine, and sat staring at the domed building in silence. His face seemed pale in the faint light.

Mara waited for him to move, but he didn't. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

He turned his head and looked at her. "I haven't been back here since I found them," he said, something in his voice, just for a moment, edged and hollow. She saw in his face a glimmer of the boy who'd stumbled back to a burning home and found the charred remains of loved ones, his youth suddenly and abruptly severed—

Luke turned his head back toward the building, and shook it. "It's been so long," he muttered. "I didn't think it would be this difficult."

"We can—" Mara began, but he shook his head again.

"It's all right," he said, "I want to do this." And he swung out of the speeder.

Mara climbed doubtfully out after him. He took her hand, she squeezed his fingers gently, and they set off towards the farm.

It was smaller than Mara had expected, hunched on the sand as though in defence against the immensity of the desert. There was something mind-boggling in the way that the sand stretched, unbroken, to the similarly flat horizon – and beyond. The bleak, harsh beauty of was all but overwhelming. Mara tried to imagine living what it would be like to live here, facing that enormity day in and day out… It was like staring into the stars and seeing eternity, but on a flatter, starker scale.

The farm was indeed in poor condition. It was clear that no one had lived there for some time – sand had seeped its way in to slowly reclaim its former territory, almost covering the domed building and flowing down into the courtyard. Everything looked to be in disrepair, from the building to the machinery near-buried by the sand.

Luke halted alongside the building, Mara stopping just behind him. The sunset was truly spectacular. One of the suns had set, and the other was less than a handspan from the darkened horizon. The sky was streaked with deep reds and golds.

The wind blew up again suddenly from nowhere, whipping Mara's hair around her face. Her tunic flapped. Luke's hair streamed, but he didn't move.

Mara wondered about his aunt and uncle, standing in this place that had been their home and their grave. Luke didn't speak about them often, but when he did, his words told of his affection for them. Perhaps they'd been distant – perhaps the memory of another Skywalker always stood between them and their charge – but they'd given Luke everything and clearly loved him in their way.

They must have been strong people, to live this life that must have been a daily struggle. To meet that immensity eye-to-eye each morning…

"Would they have liked me, do you think?" Mara asked.

"They would have," Luke answered without hesitation, not looking at her. "I'm sure of it."

She wasn't sure why it mattered he say so, but it did, a great deal. They stood together in the light of the setting sun, the wind streaming past them.

Luke crouched after a while. He picked up a handful of sand and lifted it, letting it fall through his fingers. "This place was their life," he said, his voice quiet. "They poured their souls into this ground."

Mara, standing behind him, watched as the sand streamed between his fingers and was caught by the wind, dancing on darkness-tinged air into the deepening twilight.

"I suppose I wanted you to meet them," Luke said.

Mara returned her attention to him. For a long moment she stared at the back of his head. It was a nice gesture, she supposed, wholly Luke, but rather impractical…

It abruptly fell into place. This was Luke. It wasn't a gesture. He really, truly, wanted her to meet the ones who had raised him, here in these bleak wastes, and so he'd brought her here, where she could see the hardness they endured, the farm they created, see how strong and simple and generous they were with the little that they had, because he wanted her to _know _them, wanted to share what little he had of them left—

Just as he'd brought her to Tatooine, to his homeworld, to see the difficulty and the boredom and the freedom of his childhood, to know his memories, to not only understand what they were, but to take them and live them and share them—

—_speeding with his friends through Beggar's Canyon at midday, idling in Anchorhead, dreaming of a father, watching stars at night, sheltering from sandstorms_—

He was offering her a gift, she realised. A huge gift, one that couldn't be contained in possessions, that couldn't be valued in credits. He was offering her his childhood, in effect, all the things that had shaped him and that remained a part of him to this day. He was giving her his past, freely and openly, asking nothing in return.

She didn't even know if he was consciously aware of doing so. But it was a profoundly moving gift, to Mara. It couldn't replace the neglect and coldness and pain in her childhood. It couldn't undo the damage those years of misuse had inflicted. It couldn't remove the scars of a child stolen and twisted and exploited.

But it did give her a vast sense of warmth, warmth that spread through her, warmth beyond temperature. That Luke could offer such a thing – that he could know so intimately her heart, and easily and unreservedly lay open everything that was his if it could provide some comfort or reprieve – it staggered Mara all over again to be loved by such a man.

It shouldn't have, really. The generosity, so unassuming and so complete, was profoundly Luke. It seemed he hadn't failed in his ability to surprise her, even bonded as they were. She wondered if he ever would.

Luke had risen, and stood watching the setting sun. He turned his head as she moved up behind him. Mara slipped her fingers into his hand, and he squeezed gently. They watched the last sun set together. Stars began to glimmer overhead.

"Luke?" Mara said into the night silence. He looked at her, and she turned to meet his gaze. "You know there are things you can't fix."

"I know," he said. "I know."

She moved around before him, examining his face. His eyes were deep-blue in the shadows of creeping night. He did know, she saw, but he did what he could nonetheless, because not to try would alien to his very nature…

Mara touched his cheek with her fingertips. "I love you," she said quietly.

The words were still awkward for her, and she didn't say them nearly as often as he did. But he knew, and she did, that they came with absolute truth. His eyes steady on hers, Luke smiled. He lifted his hand to her hair, fingers gentle, and bent to kiss her.

Mara held him close as the night winds blew, and he was perfectly warm.

* * *

They spent a further week on Tatooine making their leisurely way back to Mos Eisley, where Solo arrived to pick them in the _Millennium Falcon_.

"How was the honeymoon?" he asked as they climbed up the ramp.

Luke smiled and said, "Fine."

"What did you think, Mara?" Solo transferred his gaze to her, a few steps behind Luke.

Mara looked at Luke. "Best honeymoon I've ever had," she said. "Not odd at all."

Luke grinned. Han looked perplexed, but then shrugged. "Leia and I had a nice enough time here, I suppose – around all the nearly dying stuff."

Mara flicked Luke a questioning glance and he shook his head slightly, a wordless _I'll tell you later. _They followed Han into the ship.

Mara sat with Luke as they blasted away from the planet, watching its golden-brown hues diminish as it grew distant. So their honeymoon slipped away, and they returned to their life – not the lives of before, separate, but their new life, joined.

Training, clean-up missions for Karrde, forging future directions for the Jedi – growing and learning and moving ahead together – there were challenges ahead, that much was certain. Changes large and small, unsettling and exhilarating.

Great things loomed for the galaxy… And for Luke and Mara Skywalker.

Mara met Luke's eye, knew he was thinking the same thing, and smiled.

She wouldn't have it any other way.

end

* * *


End file.
